beneath the pall of misery, a new movement is born:
Heathrow is already the busiest international airport on earth. The new runway and the terminal and approach roads it needs would demolish around 1200 homes(1). One primary school will be flattened; six others will be permanently blighted by noise. Separated from the rest of Heathrow, this would, in effect, be a second airport.
(...) Already the planes and their associated traffic have been breaching the EU's limits for nitrogen dioxide pollution, which suggests that current airport activities are unlawful (remember that when you hear ministers fulminating about our illegal protest)(10). Now we are expected to believe that air pollutants can be reduced to below the legal limits while the number of flights almost doubles. It looks as if our civil servants will be busy with what they call "statisitical interpretations of the target"(11). The rest of us call it lying.
(...) Of course we cannot put climate change to one side. In a previous article I showed that, depending on whether you believe the government's figures or those produced by academic researchers, by 2050 the greenhouse gases produced by the UK's air passengers will equate to between 91% and 258% of the carbon dioxide the government says the whole economy should be producing(12). Its airport expansion plans, in conjunction with those of other nations, will cause runaway climate change even if we were to spend the rest of our lives shivering in the dark. So much for the economic benefits of new runways.
(...) The people seeking to prevent this expansion know that when the government supports a development, explaining your objections at its public inquiries is about as much use as shaking your fist at the sky. An elaborate theatre of consultation and democracy is designed only to hide the fact that the decision has already been made.