Not BAA, who have just submitted an
application to build a second runway at Stansted. The runway would add the
equivalent of 11 million tonnes of CO2 to the UK's annual carbon footprint, bulldoze a thousand acres of countryside and
make Stansted bigger than Heathrow is today.
Responding to BAA's submission of a planning application for a second runway at Stansted airport, Anna Jones, Greenpeace Aviation campaigner said:
"Whatever their executives might say, BAA's dangerous expansion plans smack of growth at any cost. Doubling the number of flights from Stansted and Heathrow at a time when the scientists are telling us we need to urgently slash our emissions is madness. The company will find a passionate majority of people who are ready to fight this runway, for the sake of the local area and their children's future.
Posted by jamie — 6 March 2008 at 7:09pm
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Following last week's direct action maelstrom at Heathrow and the Houses of Parliament, the media has been courting the people involved with features popping up all over the place about the so-called new generation of eco-activists.
A particularly interesting piece went out last night on Radio 4: Graham Thompson (described by the Evening Standard as the "daddy" of the parliament protest group) appeared on The Moral Maze to argue the case that civil disobedience is an acceptable part of protest in the democratic process. Listen again for the inevitable seven days.
Meanwhile on the Guardian's Environment Weekly podcast, our own climate campaigner Joss Garman was in the studio to talk about the 'new breed' of activist. Listen again for... well, forever probably.
But if I come across one more reference to Swampy...
Posted by bex — 28 February 2008 at 6:35pm
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Out and about on our Heathrow Voices tour last year.
If you're one of the many, many thousands of people involved in the opposition to Heathrow expansion, you may want to give yourself a pat on the back. The day after the 'consultation' closed, there's news that we're getting the message through to 'the highest levels of Labour'.
In one of two Heathrow stories in today's Evening Standard, the paper's chief political correspondent wrote:
Ministers are under increasing pressure to rethink plans for Heathrow expansion after 18,000 people lodged objections to the plans.
The scale of the protest is understood to have taken the government by surprise and is causing concern at the highest levels of Labour at the political fall-out if plans for a third runway are given the go-ahead.
Posted by jossc — 28 February 2008 at 3:13pm
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Two audacious and well executed climate actions have deservedly grabbed headlines this week - Plane Stupid's 'No third runway' banner drop on the House of Commons yesterday perfectly complimenting our own Heathrow Airport plane protest on Monday. Both sets of activists involved spoke eloquently to the media about why they were there: to expose the government's 'public consultation' as a sham, and to remind us all that climate change is the greatest threat that we face, and we have little time to start getting serious about it.
Posted by bex — 27 February 2008 at 7:16pm
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We've formally submitted our main concerns about Heathrow expansion to the government (almost as if this was a real consultation and the government was genuinely seeking views on airport
expansion...).
You can read the full submission, but this is the introduction:
Greenpeace believes that if the government is serious about tackling climate
change, there should be no question of increasing the number of flights
coming in and out of Heathrow Airport. Instead the Government should be
radically rethinking its out-of-date policy on aviation, implementing
strategies to cap the number of flights at current levels with a view to
reducing them in the future and move towards a sustainable, low-carbon
transport system.
Greenpeace also considers this consultation process to be seriously flawed:
designed to push through a decision that has already been made and without
properly taking into account the effect on the environment, or seriously
considering alternatives.
Posted by bex — 27 February 2008 at 11:18am
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Plane Stupid protest at the Houses of Parliament
Another day, another voice loudly opposing plans for a new runway at Heathrow. Today, Plane Stupid campaigners have scaled the Houses of Parliament to protest at the collusion between government and the aviation industry.
In the absence of a genuine consultation with Londoners, the protest is a brilliant way to get the word out on the day the Heathrow 'consultation' ends. They've dropped banners reading 'BAA's HQ' down parliament's facade, and are enlightening the great and the good on their way to Prime Ministers' Question Time below by throwing paper aeroplanes - made from secret Whitehall documents that prove BAA has written parts of the consultation and the government has already decided to build a third runway - from the roof.