Childish things? - MPs to vote today on Heathrow

A detail from the Heathrow advert we put in the papers today

Tonight the House of Commons plays host to the Heathrow face-off. At about 7pm this evening, MPs will vote on a motion brought by the Tories and Lib Dems against the government's plans for expanding the airport with a third runway and a sixth terminal.

The stage is set for a bit of mud-slinging in the House. It'll probably be made worse by the fact that it's the opposition who has scheduled the vote - the government didn't want to have one. Because of the realities of party politics, even Labour MPs who oppose the runway will think twice about voting for a motion that's been put up by the ‘enemy'.

However, 57 Labour MPs have already signed an Early Day Motion opposing the construction of a third runway. Tonight is theoretically their chance to pin their colours to the mast and vote against the runway. But will they vote with their principles? Or will the pressure from the Labour Whips, who are tasked with enforcing the party line, win out?

The motion against the runway urges the government to:

"rethink its plans for a third runway at Heathrow Airport and to give full consideration to alternative solutions; regrets the Government's...insufficient regard to the costs of air and noise pollution in the surrounding areas and the commitment to curb carbon dioxide emissions to tackle climate change; regrets the fact that provisions to improve high-speed rail lines from Heathrow to major cities have not been fully explored..."

The government, on the other hand, want MPs to vote for this statement to be changed to:

"[MPs welcome] the Government's commitment... to limit noise impacts and to be confident both that statutory air quality limits will be met and that public transport will be improved before expansion is permitted at Heathrow; [welcome] the Government's new enforceable target to reduce UK aviation carbon dioxide emissions below 2005 levels by 2050, and [note that] the commitment that increases in capacity at Heathrow, beyond the additional 125,000 movements a year already agreed, will only be approved after a review in 2020 by the Committee on Climate Change of whether the UK is on track to meet this independently monitored target... welcomes the proposal that new slots at Heathrow should be ‘green slots' using the most efficient planes; recognises the economic and social importance of Heathrow..."

It's pretty dry stuff, and those are the edited ‘highlights'. But even the slightly tortuous language can't cover the fact that these are two completely at-odds statements. Either you buy the government's assurances that Heathrow expansion won't be an environmental disaster, or you don't - there's no middle ground. The stage is set for the parliamentary environmental showdown of the century!

Well, OK, maybe it's difficult to get that excited about it. After all, for most of us Parliament is not normally the most exciting of places. (John McDonnell macing incidents aside.) But today's vote is important because it will highlight the tensions between narrow political interests, and the wider challenge of addressing climate change.

Today we put adverts in the papers to remind MPs of what's at stake here, quoting Barack Obama's inauguration speech. Clearly it's very tempting to plaster Obama over everything at the moment, but in this case something he said seems pretty relevant:

"Our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions - that time has surely passed."

Today came the news that levels of sea ice at the moment are lower than they were in 2007 - the year when there was a record low level of sea ice at the height of summer. That's only the most media-friendly indicator that the impacts of climate change are happening in the here and now. Every week the weight of evidence showing that we need faster action from policymakers to cut emissions is increasing. Only this week scientists from the well-respected National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration concluded that when it comes to climate change, once it's happened, there's no going back - changes in surface temperature, rainfall, and sea level are largely irreversible for more than 1,000 years after carbon dioxide emissions are completely stopped. "Our study convinced us that current choices regarding carbon dioxide emissions will have legacies that will irreversibly change the planet," said the paper's author.

Clearly, when it comes to the climate we have some broad interests to protect, and some tough decisions to make. Stopping Heathrow expansion won't solve the climate problem on its own, but it's a pretty necessary first step - unless we stop aviation expansion, we're going to end up in a situation where any other measures we take to cut our emissions will be swamped by the rapid growth in the emissions from aviation.

Furthermore, that the government can press ahead with plans for a new runway and claim that there won't be any significant environmental downside demonstrates how far they are from being part of the solution. It's probable that this evening the government will defeat the motion, and declare a victory for the third runway plans. But it won't be that - it'll be a victory for narrow political interests. Kudos to Andrew Slaughter, a junior Labour minister, for resigning over the Heathrow issue, but that's been the scale of the principled outcry on the issue. As Obama said last week, "the time has come to set aside childish things." And there's the problem - MPs are so stuck in the childish things of party politics they can't see the bigger picture. It's frustrating to see even the possibility of a new kind of politics unfolding in the states, because we seem to be stuck in the same old politics over here.