Chipping away at the aviation industry fortress...

Just say 'No': Anna with Sipson residents outside the Department of Transport

Another busy start to the week - though last week never really finished since I spent most of the weekend at the Airport Watch conference with fellow anti-airport expansion campaigners from all over the country.

It was a really useful weekend, sharing ideas, discussing how we tackle the various false solutions, like biofuels, and smoke and mirrors that the aviation industry is hiding behind, and reflecting on how far we've come. We've won all the arguments, and are gradually chipping away at the government and aviation-industry fortress, the final frontier around the out-of-date 2003 Aviation Policy that underpins airport expansion plans around the country.

It was welcome news yesterday that Sir Nicholas Stern recognised the lack of an "overall strategy" in relation to the government's support for a third runway, significantly underlining the fact that the Heathrow decision was a clear case of "policy-based evidence-making", rather than the other way around. (He's been even starker on Kingsnorth today – check it out!)

I'm lucky enough to be employed to campaign against aviation expansion – I’m always humbled by the determination and successes of people who are tirelessly campaigning against one of the 28 proposed airport expansions across the country, all in their spare time. But that’s not to say that coordinating the Airplot campaign and our other work to stop airport expansion is just a nine to five job. Far from it (many a friend has suggested that I might want to take a weekend off once in a while). Like so many of us here, working for Greenpeace isn’t just a job, it’s life. It’s life because Greenpeace’s aims are my aims as a human being: to ensure the ability of the earth to nurture life in all its diversity, to confront environmental injustice and to stand for positive change through action.

With Airplot, having bought a bit of the proposed third runway site, we’re aiming to do exactly that. We’re confronting the environmental injustice that a third runway would be, right where it would happen. And we’re enabling thousands of people (hopefully you’re one of them) to stand with us – people who have been denied a real voice through a fixed consultation process, people who are not in the pockets of BAA and can see the wood amongst the trees and recognise that if you really want to stop climate change you just can't throw more planes into the sky and keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere.

Airplot was a long-time coming, and it's still amazing to be talking about it after nine months of complete secrecy before we launched. (It’s also good to finally feel a bit less like an estate agent and more like a campaigner again!) And it's going to keep being amazing to talk about Airplot in the coming months because there’s plenty more fun (and serious stuff) in the pipeline, and at some point, with your help, we’re going to win the campaign! That's when talking about Airplot will be really, really amazing.

We’ve been overwhelmed by the positive response we've had – thanks to everyone who’s signed up, donated money and been in touch with your ideas. We're also really proud and touched to have become neighbours to the incredible residents of Sipson and surrounding villages (many of whom were adopted yesterday by Plane Stupid activists). We've needed a few weeks to get through all the incredible ideas that have come in since we launched and take stock of where we’re heading with the campaign – so apologies that you’ve not heard from us for a little while. But not long from now, we'll hopefully be launching the next bit of the plot… watch this space!