Campaign against Climate Change
Campaign against Climate Change
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Campaign against Climate Change is part of the
Stop Climate Chaos coalition.
CCC is always looking for volunteers of all kinds: if you think you can help at all please contact info@campaigncc.org . There are also the following vacant volunteer posts : Finance & Fundraising Manager, International Outreach Assistant and Events Coordinator .
Demonstration at Heathrow May 31st
Stop the third runway at Heathrow! Stop Heathrow expansion! Stop the runaway growth in aviation ! Tell the government to get real on climate change and prevent a climate catastrophe!
Join a Spring Carnival of Resistance to Airport Expansion !
See more details at the Carnival-Demo website :
Start time 12.00 noon. Assembly point Hatton Cross (Picadilly Line tube station). There will be a a carnival-style march to a festival-style event at Sipson (the village which will be destroyed if the 3rd runway goes ahead). This will include the creation the world's biggest "NO" - spelt out in human bodies.. See further www.make-a-noise.org
To Download leaflet and poster click here.
On Monday 25th February there was an indoor Rally against Heathrow expansion in the Central Hall, Westminster, with around 3,000 attending and overflowing into a second Hall ( see here ). This was after many local meetings around West London up to a thousand strong. The movement against the Third Runway at Heathrow is gathering pace….and snowballing exponentially…..
This is not just about Heathrow, this is about drawing a line in the sand against big investment decisions that are locking us into a headlong plummet into climate catastrophe. The huge expansion in aviation, of which the Heathow expansion is the flagship component, is totally incompatible with winning the battle against climate catastrophe, totally incompatible in fact, with the Government’s own Climate Bill.
This is a battle we need to win – and a battle we can win ! We want to see people coming from all over the country to join the tens of thousands who will be protesting in West London. We want a massive show of force to make sure we win our first big victory in the war to redirect Britain towards a low carbon future. Come and be part of it – join a Spring Carnival of Resistance to the Third Runway, Airport Expansion and the insanity of government decisions that would lock us into climate catastrophe.
More on Heathrow, Aviation and Climate Change
Spurred on by BAA the government wants to build a third runway at Heathrow. Aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. If aviation continues to grow at the current rate then by 2050 it will account for half of what even the government thinks is the most the UK should be emitting by then (under the 60% target originally proposed in the Climate Bill - see here ). In other words it would cancel out all the reductions that had been made up to then.
Curbing aviation growth will not prevent the destabilisation of global climate on its own - but there's no way we can get serious about tackling climate change until we get serious about tackling the runaway expansion in aviation. The current trend in the expansion of aviation is just not compatible with any realistic plan to prevent a climate catastrophe.
The government is planning for a near trebling of air passengers by 2030. To cope with these the government envisages up to 5 new runways being built with just about all existing runways working close to full capacity. This amounts to the biggest single programme of airport expansion ever seen in this country. The governments aviation policy is clearly on a collision course with its climate policy. We need to make sure that it is the former that is made to give way.
If we eliminated short haul flights - journeys that could feasibly be made by other less polluting forms of transport - then there would be no need for a third runway at Heathrow at all
But at the moment aviation is given an unfair advantage over other forms of transport. It does not have to pay tax on its fuel (the way car drivers or train operators do) and for the most part does not pay VAT. So the aviation industry is mollycoddled with a hidden subsidy - which gives it an advantage over other less environmentally damaging forms of transport.
Taking an aircraft flight is when most people cause the greatest amount of emissions in the shortest amount of time - a one way economy flight, London to New York, emits more than half a tonne of of CO2. A return flight produces about the same climate-damaging effect as one year's motoring in an average UK car. This is taking into account the fact that emissions at altitude are nearly twice as damaging as the equivalent at ground level due to the 'radiative forcing' effect. Travelling by plane can emit anything between around half as much again, to four times more than travelling by train - and that is before we almost double the figure for the plane to take into account 'radiative forcing' (see in more detail here ). Of course the very fact that aviation makes travel so much easier, and generally cheaper, means that more people travel more often and more climate-damaging emissions are produced. Most flights are not necessary in the way that heating one's house, or commuting to work is - they are part of an affluent lifestyle. Even cheap flights are taken disproportionately by the better off in society. Yet the people who will suffer worst and most immediately from climate change are those who will probably never get the chance to fly. So in other words the climate impacts of aviation represent a particularly striking way in which increasingly affluent, high-consumption lifestyles of the rich are having a negative effect on the poor.
Yet, if aviation was put on a level playing field with other forms of transport (for a start), and if other forms of transport were encouraged to replace short haul flights (the most carbon intensive per mile) then we would not need the kind of expansion in aviation envisged by the government and a third runway for Heathrow. Four fifths of all UK trips abroad are within Europe : so many of these destinations could be reached by coach or train ( and in a sleeper you needn't waste time, or get jet-lagged, either !). The government could be investing in more efficient, lower-emitting, surface transport instead of carbon-heavy aviation infrastructure.
Check here and here for more handy facts about aviation.
Some useful sites are :
Greenpeace STOP HEATHROW www.stopheathrow.org
Airport Watch www.airportwatch.org.uk
The Campaign against Climate Change is pioneering a
Global Climate Campaign
Climate Protestors in Osasca, Brazil. See more pics of the Global Day of Action here
See more here.