heathrow runway 3: the way not to?

One minute it seems like things are heading in the right direction with plans for eco-towns, the next minute it's all about the plans to build a new runway at the UK's biggest airport. Clearly increasing air traffic is hardly the greenest direction to take transport; worries about the impacts of emissions from flights on climate change are well known. So how exactly does this tie in with the governments apparent commitments to go green and tackle climate change?



As with anything there are arguments both ways. The problem is that where the environment's concerned there are no arguments for. Any benefits that are likely to come from are economic, while the best that anyone can say environmentally is that there's a chance that the impact of a new runway on carbon emissions will be relatively insignificant in the scheme of things. There's two problems with that 1) this only may be the case. The jury is still out on precisely how large the impact is from air traffic on climate change. It is estimated that the new runway would increase the number of flights from 480,000 per year to over 700,000 which seems a pretty significant increase by any one's standards; and 2) nearly all steps we take to reduce carbon emissions have a minimal effect by themselves, it's when you look at the over all picture that they add up to significant reductions.

So what are the arguments in favour of the new runway? Well, first of all the development is estimated to generate £5 billion for the British economy, although this figure will be spread over the next 70 years. There is also the argument that Heathrow will no longer be able to compete as an international airport - it already runs at 99% capacity, leading to huge delays as soon as anything goes wrong.

But there are also other arguments against the runway as well as the environmental ones. Some argue that it's not only the airport that is at capacity bu the roads and other infrastructure surrounding it. For a new runway to be effective it will also be necessary to improve roads and other transport networks to cope with it. Also those of us who don't live in the south east are often obliged to spend time and money commuting to Heathrow as many international flights, especially long haul, operate from there. If there is to be expansion of Britain's airports then perhaps it's not Heathrow that needs to be focused on. Finally there are a number of factors which may impact on air travel in the future, in particular fuel taxes and carbon taxes which may be introduced in order to try and cut carbon emissions. These will have the effect of increasing ticket prices and could potentially reduce the demand for air travel anyway.

So what's happening now? Well, approval for the project has only recently been granted so nothing is certain yet. Many environmental groups are already mounting campaigns against it, in particular Greenpeace who have bought up a plot of land on the proposed site to try and prevent the plans going ahead as well as mounting a campaign called Airplot to raise awareness of the situation. If you want to get involved you can visit their website.

Whatever your point of view on the development it's hard to see how the government can reconcile such a potentially huge increase in air traffic with their commitment to reduce carbon emissions by 80% by 2050. It's early days yet, and only time will tell what the final outcome will be.