Why we campaign on coal and aviation

You may have seen an article in the Observer citing James Hansen, the head of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Centre, arguing that when it comes to climate change, aviation is not a danger. We have worked closely with James in the past - in particular he gave evidence at the trial of the Kingsnorth 6, securing their acquittal on the grounds that more coal-fired power stations would be a climate disaster. We agree with him that coal is the critical issue for addressing global climate change - but we also believe that addressing the special circumstances around aviation expansion in the UK is of vital importance.

Coal is clearly the central climate challenge, both around the world and in the UK. Coal-fired power plants are currently responsible for over a quarter of UK carbon emissions, which is why a large amount of our campaigning capacity is devoted to opposing new coal-fired power stations, and promoting the clean power technologies which mean we don't need to build them.

The facts are simple - if we continue our reliance on unabated coal-fired power stations, we will cause irreversible and self-sustaining climate change. Burning coal could lead to the destruction of a liveable environment, which is why Greenpeace runs the biggest anti-coal campaign in the country, and why coal is a key theme for our campaigns around the world - my colleagues at Greenpeace China, for example, have been working over the past decade to shift China away from coal, and towards renewable power.

Given how substantially we need to cut our emissions, however, it is also clear to us that coal is not the only issue we must work on. The growth in aviation as a source of carbon emissions cannot be ignored and this is especially true in the UK. In the UK, our per-person aviation emissions are already higher than any other country in the world - more than even the United States. While at the moment Drax coal-fired power station in Yorkshire is the biggest single source of carbon emissions in the UK, an expanded Heathrow would overtake it to become the biggest individual UK emitter. Across the EU, aviation emissions have doubled since 1990 (pdf).

Scientists in the UK have shown that the rapid and ongoing growth that we are experiencing in the aviation sector has the potential to swamp all of our other efforts to cut emissions. This is why our campaign team has identified aviation as a key challenge for us in the fight against climate change. We must reverse government policy on aviation expansion.

The government has committed to cutting emissions by 80 per cent by 2050. Scientific research from the Tyndall centre has shown that aviation expansion will destroy our ability to meet that target - trashing the entire regulatory framework that has been created, at great cost in time and effort, to address our rising carbon emissions. Their work has shown that even with growth rates lower than we currently see in the UK, aviation could account for our entire carbon budget by 2050.

In 2050, according to the government's own targets and figures, Heathrow would take up about 20 per cent of the carbon budget for our entire country - up to one fifth, from one airport. As we make emissions cuts, our carbon budget will have to be spent wisely - on powering and heating our homes, on getting around, on growing food and on building a low-carbon society.

Perhaps when the government puts in place the laws and funding needed to reduce the UK's overall energy use by 25 per cent, ensures that there is no coal without CCS anywhere in our energy system by 2025, decarbonises our energy system entirely by 2030, develops the infrastructure to electrify the whole of our surface transport system, and secures a properly funded and functioning global forest protection system - perhaps then we might be a in a position to consider a massive expansion of our aviation sector.

Until then, no deal. We question what gives a handful of airports, owned by even fewer companies, the right to squander our emissions budgets without check or restraint. The UK government has created the emissions reductions targets. It has committed to them. It has also said it wants to massively expand aviation. These things can not possibly sit together - and that is why we campaign against aviation expansion and coal together, as the key focus of our climate campaign.

Anita Goldsmith is the head of our aviation campaign team.