Heathrow Biggest Carbon Emissions Source In UK; It Will Somehow Expand 50% "Sustainably"
The bosses at Heathrow must have been visiting another planet last week, or else they missed the government memo about legislating for net zero emissions by 2050. The plans unveiled today for a 50% expansion in the airport by 2050, including a third runway, all to be done in “a sustainable way”, take dissembling to new levels. Heathrow is already the largest single source of carbon emissions in the UK.
The outline plans reveal the scale of what’s proposed: building a tunnel for the M25, rerouting rivers, building enormous carparks outside the perimeter of the current airport, destroying local villages. The government itself says nearly a million households will be affected by the third runway, which will allow another 700 flights a day.
Heathrow’s owners maintain that the airport’s expansion will not significantly alter the UK’s emissions, but only reach this conclusion by excluding international aviation emissions. That suggests they missed another memo, this time from the committee on climate change which has said emissions from international aviation should be formally included in the UK’s climate targets.
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An official strategy which not only wants to build a third runway at Heathrow but also expand regional airports is not going to rein in airline emissions – which raises the question of whether the government is serious about reducing the UK’s carbon emissions, let alone reaching net zero. And the plan to rely on international carbon offsets to balance the carbon books (as the legislation allows) is simply deceitful. Carbon offsetting will not deliver the net zero future that the science tells us we need to achieve, since all sectors in all countries will need to get as close as possible to zero emissions, and there’s a limit to how much remaining CO2 we can hope to soak up with new forests.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jun/18/heathrow-expansion-mockery-zero-emissions
