Bristol Green Party

Airport Expansion: Uneconomic As Well As Unecological - Pete Goodwin, 2 January 2007

To: Bristol Evening Post

Dear Sir/Madam

Now that the European Emissions Trading Scheme has been announced, I would like to add to the case against airport expansion so clearly put by Glenn Vowles of the Green Party (22nd December)

Emissions Trading is the 'market' approach to limiting the damage done by greenhouse gas releases, getting them down to sustainable levels as a matter of real urgency. The European scheme makes nonsense of any such ambition. By bringing aviation into the same market as ground level polluters, it has the opposite result. Every unit saved on land can be bought up by airlines eager to expand, giving them the right to release gases in the high atmosphere where they will do two to four times as much damage.

What kind of pollution control is that?

It doesn't end there, the economy could be hit just as hard as the climate. As airlines expand, their demand for the limited supply of 'emissions rights' is going to push the price up far higher than it would be in a purely land-based market. Other industries that might have found it possible to operate in a regime of decreasing emissions by trading between themselves, will find that aviation's extra demands will push up their energy costs to an intolerable level. Result back home? More expensive fuel, more expensive transport, and a general loss of competitiveness.

BIA likes to present its expansionist ambitions for Lulsgate as if the same thing wasn't happening across the rest of the industry.

Realists will be able to see beyond that spin. Lets hope the Greens' realism spreads quickly through the other parties before the economic and environmental damage is done.

Yours

Peter Goodwin
Bristol Green Party

Page last updated April 10, 2007