Part of the Climate Clinic blog
There's something unhealthy in the air up here in Manchester. As the Labour party conference rumbled on down the road, I sat in a fringe meeting today at the Climate Clinic where the chap from the British Airports Authority allowed the 'sincerity' to drip from his lips like dark honey.
Oh yes, they're concerned, so very concerned by climate change. Cripes, that science, it's so frightening isn't it? But he wants a third runway at Heathrow, and god knows how many more runways across the country, and he wants expansion for a very simple reason - the industry predicts a 300 per cent rise in flights. It wants more planes to fly, which in turn will release more carbon into the atmosphere, which in turn will kill people.
Earlier I'd sat in another fringe held by the Tyndall Centre where the pointy-heads told us we'd need to replace short-haul flights with rail if we're to hit the new target the science has laid out - a 70-80 per cent cut in emissions by 2050. This is common sense telling us to quit smoking, and BAA is that Nico-teen cartoon baddy from those posters at school, the one saying, "Hey kids, smoking's so coooool."
So yeah, people are dying. Andrew Pendleton from Christian Aid told us about the elderly people he's met in the developing world who've witnessed the extreme weather that's now part of their lives. They know things are changing, they've seen it in their lifetimes. But they'll be gone soon enough and it'll be their kids and grandchildren who'll see further changes.
The High Commissioner of Bangladesh was in the Clinic last night, where he said 14 million of his people face disaster if temperatures rise by just one degree. One degree! We're nearly there already, but if the airline industry gets its way we won't stand a chance of avoiding that key threshhold, a two degree rise, where lies the notorious tipping point.
Michael Meacher MP spoke on the subject - he said he thought it was probably true that aviation was vital to the UK economy. "Hang on," an economist scoffed, "we subsidise an Irish airline to buy American planes to fly British people to spend their money in Spain." And in what could be a unique moment in British politics, Meacher replied, "Yes, I suppose you're right. I withdraw my comment, I was wrong."
Holy global planetary emergency, Batman. It'd be a nice old thing if our chums from BAA could swallow their pride, swallow the science and say something similar.
