Manchester airport expansion plans halted

Finally, some good news on climate change. Following protests and opposition expansion plans for three of our largest regional airports have been shelved. Manchester, Birmingham International and Luton have all dropped their plans to build new runways, marginally improving the UK's chances of meeting our long-term climate targets. They are respectively Britain's third, fifth and sixth busiest airports.

This follows John Gummer's heartening announcement two weeks ago that the Tories would discourage flying on routes already served by fast train services, saying: "Would it not be better to ensure that - as trains have 13 times lower carbon emissions than flying - that we favoured this form of transport for those routes?" And last week Rail Minister Tom Harris, pointing out that rail now dominates the Manchester-London route ahead of air services, endorsed that sentiment when he commented "You don't need to fly when you can travel city centre to city centre in just over two hours."

Of course there is still a large downside. 39 flights a day still travel between London and Manchester, and many other plans to expand the UK's airports are still on the table, including a third runway for the country's largest airport, Heathrow. This runway would be dedicated to increasing Heathrow's capacity for short haul flights - just what the planet needs...

Plans for airport expansion are completely at odds with the government’s commitment to tackle climate change; Gordon Brown desperately needs to step in to cap aviation growth by stopping airport expansion. But, given the New Labour's famously cosy relationship with the aviation industry, we're not holding our breath.

Still, with this year’s climate camp due to take place at Heathrow Airport in August, and the public consultation on Heathrow’s expansion beginning in the autumn, things could get interesting. Watch this space…