I noted in my post earlier this week, The British Are Coming, that in spite of a stubborn, wasteful sticking to its guns on nuclear power and CCS, the new coalition government headed by the Conservatives has got an awful lot to recommend it – certainly on paper. Well, David Cameron has lived up to his commitments and is killing any further runway expansion at London’s airports, Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted. He’s done this, in large part, in the name of curtailing the massive further GHG loading that more air traffic into London would bring.
The excellent Libby Rosenthal reports here in the The “NY Times” that the UK is seeking at least 34% reduction in GHGs by 2020 from levels reached in 1990. She quotes Teresa Villiers, Britain’s minister of state for transport, regarding Heathrow’s runway: “The 220,000 or so flights that might well come with a third runway would make it difficult to meet the targets we’d set for ourselves.”
Aviation is an important contributor to GHGs. Nobody in their right mind is suggesting that we shut down the wonderfully effective global air transportation network that we’ve developed over the past 50 years. It has facilitated much more of the “global village” gestalt that, in my view and others’, promotes a more economically sound and peaceful planet. Companies, nations, NGOs and others have been working, though, to lower the footprint of aviation through a number of approaches. One way, which I wrote about a while back, is to make airports more sustainable. (See The Only Way to Fly.)
In any event, bravo for the new government in Britain!
