Commuting in Kathmandu is difficult, at best. Taxis are extortionately priced, buses are overcrowded, and the city is big enough that walking is often impractical. Increasingly, people are turning to bicycles as a remedy. Proponents are now emphasising the positive effects of cycling in terms of ecology, Nepali independence and improving safety on the streets. It is a dangerous, yet remarkably political mode of transport.

Unlike campaign groups that focus on the macrocosm of global climate change, Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 focuses on the city itself. Member Shail Shrestha describes Kathmandu’s air as ‘unimaginably polluted’, but adds that this pollution is caused by those who can afford private transport, while those who can’t are affected most – witness for example the many Nepalis who live in shacks on the ring road, a highway that leaves passers-by coughing from the fumes of cars, buses and motorbikes.

Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 sees its campaign as rallying against social inequality. As another member, Rajan Kathet, says: ‘The “have nots” have always been victimised by the “haves”.’ Shrestha believes that Nepal can set an example for other countries to follow: ‘If a developing country does this [promotes cycling], it could be an example for countries that pollute.’

Nepal is currently in the midst of a fuel shortage. Schools, small businesses and organisations are struggling to get fuel for their vehicles. There are mile-long queues at every petrol station. Nepali independence activists claim that fuel dependency on neighbouring India is inhibiting progress in Nepal. The fuel shortage is caused, they claim, by deficit and corruption within the Nepal Oil Corporation, which is entirely dependent on the Indian Oil Corporation—to which it is in debt. In order to eradicate this debt, the Nepali Oil Corporation last week announced they would add 10 Rupees (approximately 9 pence) to every litre of fuel sold. Even in UK terms, this is no small amount. It would make fuel unaffordable for many Nepalis. Fortunately the decision was reversed following a Kathmandu-wide strike at the end of January, led by 13 of the city’s Students’ Unions.

Many social organisations in Nepal talk about ‘improving the country’ in terms of making it fuel-independent. The strike action only implies a general consensus that greater sovereignty would be beneficial. Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 is instead keen to ‘do action’. It deems cycling to be the best way to move away from fuel dependence. Indeed, in the context of a fuel shortage, cycling is being increasingly recognised as a cheap, accessible and non-polluting way to keep the city operating. Cycling in Kathmandu has become synonymous with freedom.

Yet safety remains a major concern. Just a few months ago, the revered wildlife conservationist, Dr Pralad Yonzon, was killed whilst cycling on the road in Kathmandu. Refusing to be scared off by the number of accidents, Kathmandu Cycle City 2020 held a rally to promote better visibility and to encourage more people to use bicycles instead of motorbikes.

Although bicycles are in fact generally safer than motorbikes in Kathmandu, they are seen as less fashionable among younger Nepalis. Shrestha explains that, ‘there is an idea that people who cycle are those who can’t afford [motor]bikes’. By highlighting the number of deaths on motorbikes compared to those on bicycles, the group are hoping to challenge this belief.

Promoting cycling on such dangerous streets is the first hurdle that the group have to overcome. On January 11, the group gained one of their first wins. Following extensive lobbying by activists, the government announced that they intend to build cycle lanes on all roads over 22 metres wide. Meanwhile the number of cyclists in Kathmandu has risen since the start of the campaign.

The group’s main aim is that Kathmandu becomes a bicycle-friendly city by 2020. Along the way, they are making a real difference to regular people’s lives and to Nepal as a whole. With advocates like Kathet and Shrestha, it won’t be long before more Kathmanduites will, as the group’s motto says, ‘ride with pride’.

Find out more on Kathmandu Cycle City 2020’s website.

From international hubs to tiny airfields, airports are expanding across the UK. The government is currently holding a consultation on the expansion of Heathrow, where a proposed third runway could see the number of planes rise from 473,000 to more than 720,000 a year. Almost every major hub is pressing for more flights, extra runways and new terminals, while, at the other end of the scale, even tiny airfields like Lydd in the Kent marshes have their sights set on growth. But equally remarkable is the scale and variety of protest against these airport expansions. Virtually every project is being opposed, by campaigns both locally and nationally.

‘Climate change and noise are the two factors driving the campaigners. What initially gets residents campaigning is the noise, the sheer number of planes going overhead. But for most of the large environmental groups climate change is the key factor,’ says John Stewart, chair of the national umbrella body Airport Watch. ‘Local and national are brought together. Government can’t be serious about climate change and continue with an aggressive programme of airport expansion.’

Campaigns have sprung up against a background of perceived failure in government climate policy towards aviation expansion. In December 2003, the government white paper, The Future of Air Transport gave the go ahead for a massive programme of airport building at Heathrow, Stansted, Newcastle, Bristol and many other sites to facilitate the growth of what it sees as an economically crucial industry. In this rush to expand, the looming issue of climate change has been virtually ignored, as have the persistent local complaints about aircraft noise and the destruction of countryside.

Airport expansion campaigners say that the current 6-7 per cent share of UK greenhouse gas emissions caused by flying will grow rapidly in the coming decades. According to the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, even if the aviation industry grew at only half the rate it did in 2004, by 2050 the industry would consume between half and all of the UK carbon budget necessary to prevent ‘dangerous’ climate change. And because the carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases are released at such a high altitude, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has estimated that the climate changing effect of flying is around two to four times greater than if the carbon dioxide produced were emitted on the ground. Far from doing their bit to avoid climate change, airports and airlines are being allowed to trample over the efforts of the rest of society.

Coming together

Airport Watch, founded in 2000, reflects the scope of opposition arranged against airport expansion. It loosely links together major international environmental bodies, such as Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, with conservation groups like the Campaign to Protect Rural England and the National Trust. Also joining the movement have been wildlife organisations including the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, local anti-noise campaigns, the World Development Movement and more radical direct action groups like Plane Stupid and Rising Tide, to name a few.

Co-operation between groups with very different initial concerns has in many places led to major success, not least because by working together groups can neutralise the most regular criticisms levelled at them. Noise campaigners who have also taken on board messages about the melting ice caps are harder to dismiss as ‘nimbys’, whereas a green group allied to the local parish council is better placed to resist ‘tree-hugging’ stereotypes.

In August 2007, the Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow attracted international attention, helped by the Independent newspaper who revealed that BAA were seeking an injunction to not only keep groups like Plane Stupid away from the airport and large parts of the London transport network, but also to restrict members of the National Trust, the RSPB and the Woodland Trust because of their affiliation to Airport Watch. By building such a wide coalition against Heathrow, it has become harder for the airports to portray opposition as a radical fringe.

Not only are different groups uniting at an organisational level, but residents’ campaigns are being increasingly influenced by the tactics of the direct action environmental groups.

‘Local residents have politely and obediently responded to planning applications, written to their councillors or MP, written to government ministers – and all the other polite middle class things to do … and been fobbed off time and time again,’ says Sarah Clayton of Airport Watch.

‘They are becoming frustrated, and increasingly realise that some form of direct action is the only way to actually get the powers-that-be to sit up and take notice. Middle England ladies in pearls and twin sets are becoming, cautiously, quite interested in direct action out of desperation and despair at the conventional democratic process. Climate Camp was a remarkable success in many ways.’

Divide and rule

Yet there still remains a split between the concerns of residents and those of the environmental groups, and this can allow airports to divide and rule campaigns against them. In 2006, the Duchy of Lancaster proposed a £3million plan to expand the capacity of Tatenhill, a former second world war airfield near Burton-on-Trent, to accommodate 20,000 more flights a year on top of the current 30,000. During a planning inquiry in November last year into the development, the local opposition – Tatenhill Action Group – dropped its challenge after the Duchy agreed to noise restrictions, limited operating hours and restrictions on jets. Friends of the Earth was left alone, still opposing the expansion on climate change grounds.

‘The place where you have the most success is where all parties play all cards regarding local and national issues,’ explains Chris Crean, the Midlands regional campaigner for Friends of the Earth, who continues to fight Tatenhill’s expansion, ‘and equally where they are aware of how the application fits into planning policies, be they local, regional, or national.’

Integration of the climate change argument is increasingly important in any campaign, as it continues to move up the political agenda. Pat Mathewson, of Airport Concern Exeter, argues that, ‘In Exeter there was a consensus not to use the climate change argument; to keep it local; to focus on noise; to sound as if we were not against the airport as such; asking for sympathy for those under the flight path and so on. I think in retrospect this was a mistake. I did, personally, use climate change in my personal arguments to the local councillors.’

The potential of the anti-expansion coalitions is plain to see. Combining a wider green agenda with stiff local defiance, many campaigners see parallels with the opposition to road building schemes in the 1990s. Yet without clear expansion flashpoints, environmental groups may lose their newfound allies and be unable to carry the momentum against airports into the wider movement against climate change.

Just as the composition of anti-expansion groups is complex and changing, so are their methods. Direct action has proved to be the most successful in attracting media attention, with the Camp for Climate Action last August making headlines and the blockade of a Manchester airport security check-in by Plane Stupid and Manchester Climate Action in October also receiving widespread media attention.

Direct action pros and cons

‘Other forms of protest simply don’t work anymore,’ claims Robbie Gillett, an activist for Plane Stupid. ‘Marching from A to B and passively listening to a speaker at a rally will not be enough to stop climate change. At best these can help people get involved. But at worst, they can leave people feeling disempowered.’ ‘For example, the action last October at Manchester airport involving seven people locking on and blockading the domestic flight departure lounge got more media attention than the march in December with 5,000 people in London.’

Yet the media coverage of direct action is very often tinged with alarmism in the shadow of 9/11, with the Sun, for example, running headlines such as ‘Activists plot Heathrow hell’ when the climate campers assembled last summer. Some activists, although by no means a majority, have warned that high-profile national direct action risks scaring off more ‘moderate’ support for local campaigns.

‘The legal controversy around the [climate] camp was useful, but generally direct action is a distraction and can damage our support amongst more moderate people,’ says Jeremy Birch of Bristol Friends of the Earth, which is currently campaigning to prevent a doubling of passengers at Bristol International Airport.

However, as long as public opinion increasingly demands action on climate change, and aviation protesters can demonstrate they have a broad base of support, then direct action will become an increasingly powerful tool for those who feel powerless using traditional channels of protest. It looks set to overtake marching and petitioning as a tactic to gain the media’s attention over aviation expansion, especially as a small group of direct activists are far better able to deliver an ‘on message’ argument to the press.

Gary Dwyer, part of the media team for the Camp for Climate Action, says: ‘Imagine if those 1,500 people at the camp had signed a card to their MP and tell me what you think would’ve happened.’

‘Direct action opens doors, it ramps up pressure, it beckons the spotlight over. But it’s more than just aggressive lobbying; it empowers those who take part. They go away enthused and fired up, feeling like they can be heard and that they do have the right to directly affect things that affect them. Once tasted, you keep going back for more.’

The resort to direct action is partly a result of the lack of success campaigners have had convincing local politicians to stand up to central government policy. But there have been a few victories. In November 2006, Uttlesford district council rejected a planning application from BAA to allow a big increase in flights at Stansted, after it was bombarded with objections from local communities. Although a new runway is still a possibility, Ruth Kelly has indicated that the expansion of Heathrow, not Stansted, will be the government’s priority, and is now the focus of the battle against airport growth in the south east.

A public consultation into the building of a third runway and a sixth terminal at Heathrow is due to be completed on 27 February, but campaigners say that often ‘consultations’ are far more ornamental than real. ‘Feedback’ is sprinkled over essentially unchanged plans.

More likely to trip up the government are EU pollution limits, due to come into force in 2010, which John Stewart says are already exceeded in parts of London under flight paths. The idea touted by the government that better plane and car cleanliness will by 2020 have reduced pollution to European standards, despite a new runway, is utterly implausible, he says.

The influence of the state-backed expansion juggernaut means that local politicians are often no more willing to listen to the arguments against airport growth than the government. Campaigners from Airport Concern Exeter claimed that certain councillors had conflicts of interest that ‘bordered on corruption’, citing that the leader of East Devon district council, who will receive Exeter airport’s planning application, councillor Sara Randall Johnson, is also the head of PR for budget airline Flybe.

Changing government policy

Even if they are willing to oppose expansion plans, the difficulty that local authorities face is that after a planning or public inquiry into an airport’s application for expansion, the final decision is made by one or more departments of central government. Power over airport expansion is centralised, and therefore the ultimate aim of most major groups remains policy change from the government.

‘The number one aim is to get government policy to change,’ concludes Sarah Clayton. ‘Government is the first target, as well as the EU. Airlines just do what they are allowed to, to make money. Government can control the future projections, future expansion or not, and so on. So a primary aim is getting the aviation white paper modified, so it is in line with UK climate change policy. Ministers at the Department of Transport are dimly aware that there is a massive inconsistency in policy, and at some stage something has to give.’

There was minimal change to the aviation white paper when it was reviewed in 2006, and proposals to include aviation into the European Union’s emissions trading scheme by 2011 have been repeatedly attacked as inadequate by Friends of the Earth Europe. Nonetheless, the lack of any current international framework on aviation has not prevented governments from taking unilateral action on domestic flights. As part of France’s recent ‘grenelle de l’environnement’, President Sarkozy announced taxes on domestic flights where the same route has a TGV connection, for example from Paris to Lyon or Paris to Bordeaux.

­­­Governments may be unwilling to act to stem the explosion in aviation and airport building, but ultimately only they hold the power to do so. Campaigners will have most success if they manage to combine broad-based, localised opposition with the desperate need for urgent policy changes to avert climate change via creative and inclusive direct action initiatives.

more information:

www.airportwatch.org.uk

www.stopheathrowexpansion.com

The best option by far is to plan a plane-free route to your holiday destination. The environmental group Tourism Concern predicts that by 2015 half of the annual destruction of the ozone layer will be caused by commercial air traffic. If you feel you have no option but to take to the skies try to avoid internal flights and stopovers. Take-offs and landings release the most carbon.

You can also offset the carbon emissions of your flight – either by investing in a campaign against climate change or planting some trees. Although offsetting schemes are hugely controversial, many environmentalists argue it’s better than nothing. Log on to www.futureforests.com or www.climatecare.org, which have carbon calculators to show how much your flight has cost the planet.

Automobiles

For short journeys cars are the least green transport. Cold engines produce up to 60 per cent more fumes than warm ones and it takes about five miles before catalytic converters begin to work. But if the car remains the only option there are a number of practical measures you can take to improve fuel economy – avoiding fast acceleration/ heavy braking, making sure your car is properly tuned and checking that the tyres are at the correct pressure for starters.

Trains

For journeys overseas, the train is something of an underused option – though the Eurostar service to Paris and Brussels has helped. In April Eurostar announced plans to make its high-speed train services ‘even greener’ and slash CO2 emissions by 25 per cent per traveller journey by 2012. A full train is at least twice as energy efficient – and less polluting – than a full car. However, despite the absence of direct carbon emissions the electric train is mainly powered by fossil fuels – coal and gas – so it’s not an entirely eco-friendly option.

Buses and coaches

Bus and coach travel is a less greener option than train travel but far better than car. The government website www.direct.gov.uk/en/travelandtransport/index provides information on your nearest bus or coach service, the types of tickets you can buy and how to avoid a penalty fare in London, among much else. You can even find out how to hire a coach or community bus. There are also details of discounted bus and coach tickets for young people, seniors and disabled people.

Caravan

Don’t let the fact that Margaret Beckett is a caravanning enthusiast put you off. According to the Telegraph she described it as the ‘environmentally friendly way’ to holiday and she has a point.

Caravanners spend most of their holiday outdoors and eliminate the need for concrete cities of purpose built holiday resorts, instead using the existing infrastructure of roads, towns, villages and farms. But some vans are oil-leaking eco-disasters and some sites are stains on the landscape.

A variety of organisations offer guidelines on how to caravan responsibly, from national caravan clubs through to Friends of the Earth, the three main points being: choosing environmentally aware sites; thinking about how to operate, in the caravan and around the site; and ensuring that the caravan itself is as environmentally sound as possible. For more tips check out www.practicalcaravan.com/features/green.html

Water travel

Most water travel is low impact – especially sailing vessels – and although it is slow and the port may be some distance away, sea travel is a worthy green option. Eco-cruises have taken off in response to a quest by both passengers and cruise operators to go off the beaten track and explore their natural surroundings more respectfully .

Legs

Remember not to overlook the cheapest form of holiday transport, your legs! Walking or cycling is the cheapest and greenest travel option by far. So consider holidaying locally. Explore walking holidays on www.ramblers.org.uk and cycle tours on www.bicyclebeano.co.uk. And even if you haven’t managed to make it to your holiday destination by entirely eco-friendly means try to make it up by only walking, biking and using public transport to get around once there. Chop and change

Choosing a single best method of transport can be difficult and sometimes impossible. Consider combining different options to make the best use of each. Go on journey planner websites such as www.seat61.com, which advocates travel by train and ship. It contains comprehensive information on just about any route a traveller could desire.

The new ecoescape green travel guide helps you find the nearest rail and cycle route links to help you on your way. A bit of forward planning can ensure you adopt a convenient mix of various ethical transport for different parts of the journey.

Slow travel

In March 2007, Ed Gillespie set off on his round-the-world trip as a ‘slow traveller’. For the most part, slow travel involves anything but flying and is the antidote to fast getaway breaks. It follows on the heels of the slow food movement, the antidote to fast food. Gillespie is cataloguing his year-long trip on www.lowcarbontravel.com. So don’t let the extra time taken to ethically travel put you off. The pleasure should be in the journey not just the destination.

Bon voyage!

Other sites:

www.travelwise.org.uk

www.ecotravelling.co.uk

www.responsibletravel.com

Musically, you may be beyond redemption, but there are ways to solve your environmental problem. Rather than cityhopping by plane, try travel website The Man in Seat Sixty-One for suggestions about how to wend your way between gigs by land and sea.

Trains and boats are ideal for someone of your musical inclination, with excellent scope for singalongs and improvised musical numbers. You can karaoke your way through a million love songs by the time you hit Calais.

However, even if you refrain from emission-heavy modes of transport, your idols will not. I can’t see Gary Barlow and company crooning ‘Could it be Magic’ from the backseat of a Megabus, or breaking into an impromptu chorus of ‘Everything Changes’ while stranded on the platform at Crewe station.

No, no. It’s going to be short-haul central for those boys. They might try to greenwash their reputation by planting a tree for every gig – but an entire grove of Jason Orange saplings is unlikely to save the world, or do much for bio-diversity.

You’re better off starting a campaign to encourage the band back into retirement.

Once they’re back for good in Cheshire, you’ll be free to indulge your inexplicable obsession while sticking to your environmental convictions.

Take that and party

On present tends, aviation is going to continue to gobble up oil and emit pollutants. It currently accounts for just over 3.5 percent of total CO2 emissions worldwide. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that by 2050 emissions from aircraft could be responsible for up to 15 percent of total global warming produced by human activities.

Despite this, the UK Government is committed to a programme of aggressive aviation growth. Its Aviation White Paper, published in December 2003, aimed to cater for a near-trebling of passengers by 2030. It suggested that as many as five new runways would be required – that is, the equivalent of at least two new Heathrows.

This level of expansion is incompatible with the Government’s target to cut emissions. A recent report by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee commented: “if aviation emissions increase on the scale predicted by the Department for Transport, the UK’s 60 percent carbon emission reduction target…..will become meaningless and unachievable.”

So, what is to be done? For the foreseeable future there is no realistic alternative to oil for running aircraft. The two possible alternatives are both problematic. Although hydrogen-based fuel would not produce carbon dioxide, it would lead to the forming of two and a half times more water vapour than kerosene, thus causing a substantial greenhouse effect. A report by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, published in 2002, concluded, “it follows that hydrogen can be discounted as a way to reduce the climate change impacts of air travel, at least for many decades.”

The other alternative fuel being talked about is derived from biomass. But this raises considerable environmental problems. Its potential CO2 savings are unclear as energy is required to create sulphur-free kerosene from biomass sources and a considerable amount of land and fertilisers are required to grow biomass.

If alternative fuels are to be ruled out, is it possible that technological advances will result in aircraft gobbling up less oil? Experts estimate that there are likely to be fuel efficiency improvements of 15 percent over the next 20 years, with a 25 percent improvement possible if what is technically feasible can be fully exploited. It is also estimated that, if the typical aircraft reduced its cruising speed by 25 percent, there would be an average saving of around 7 percent in fuel used.

These technical advances will almost certainly be wiped out by the predicted growth in aviation. In the UK the Government expects passenger numbers to almost treble over the next 30 years. Across the world aviation is expanding. But this growth is not inevitable. It is being artificially stimulated by the tax concessions received by the aviation industry. Aviation fuel is tax-free and, in most countries, there is no VAT on aviation transactions. This is the main reason why we can fly to Prague for the price of a pint at our local. Equally, aviation doesn’t pay the full price of the social and environmental costs it imposes on society. A fairer tax system would cut the rate of passenger growth and possibly over time produce an actual reduction in air travel.

And yet people do want to travel. On business, for leisure and to visit family. But the ability to travel and meet with each other also plays an important role in cementing together many protest organisations, including the growing anti-globalisation movement. There are ways, I believe, by which we can cut air travel without placing excessive restrictions on travel itself.

Firstly, rail needs to be promoted as an alternative means of travel. High speed rail is winning passengers from the airlines. During the first ten months of 2004, EuroStar attracted 68 percent of the traffic between London and Paris; and 64 percent on its Brussels route. The story of the TGV high speed lines in France is similar. The TGV on average is attracting 90 percent of the traffic where the train journey is two hours or less; 65 percent of the people at three hours; and a credible 40 percent at four hours. If the network were to be expanded, German towns such as Cologne, Dusseldorf, Frankfurt and Stuttgart, could be brought within three hours of Paris. Milan and Bilbao would just be three and a half hours away from the French capital.

For journeys of around three hours rail is winning out -that is a distance of about 500km by high speed train. Given the fact that 45 percent of trips in European airspace are less than 500km in length, there is considerable scope for change. But this is not an argument for covering Europe with high speed rail as it is not a problem-free means of transport. It does use up enormous amounts of electricity. Its huge construction costs can result in resources being diverted from more environmentally-friendly and socially-equitable local transport projects. It does encourage people to make ever-longer journeys. However it is true that a limited network of high speed lines across Europe, linked into reliable local rail and bus services, could provide an attractive alternative to air travel.

Secondly, individuals need to examine their own flying habits. A 40 year-old friend of mine recently told me that he intended to limit himself to three more holidays by air in his lifetime. They would be to distant places which he couldn’t reach by train. And he would savour every minute of his time in the Himalayas, New York City and admiring Table Mountain in Cape Town! Forty years ago, we never thought of recycling our rubbish, bottle-banks were unheard of and the campaign for lead-free petrol hadn’t even begun. It is not inconceivable to think of rationing our air travel.

Thirdly, governments need to help us to go in this direction by removing the tax concessions from air travel and thus make it less tempting to fly to our school-friend’s wedding in Copenhagen or her hen night in Dublin. If cigarettes were 20p a packet, giving up smoking would be a lot harder! Ryanair and Easyjet are equally addictive…..particularly when the price is so low.

Fourthly, the onus to change falls primarily on the rich world. Fewer than 5 percent of all the people on earth have travelled by plane in their lives. Even in Europe, it is the rich who fly the most. A recent report from the Civil Aviation Authority showed that, in the UK, people from social classes A and B, who make up 24 percent of the population, took 40 percent of all flights in 2003. Even at Stansted, where low-cost airlines account for nearly all the passenger flights, the average income of British passengers was more than £47,000. It’s the rich world, and the rich within the rich world, who fly the most, whizzing to six or seven weekend breaks a year and second homes in the sun.

Carbon rationing within a system of contraction and convergence could be the way forward. This is the idea put forward by people like Aubrey Meyer and Mayer Hillman where an internationally agreed figure for a global reduction in emissions would form the basis of a system that required ‘over-consumers’ like the US to contract sharply, while ‘under-consumers’ like Bangladesh could continue to rise for a while until there was something approaching international convergence. It could allow a rapid, but orderly, retreat from fossil fuel dependency. Contraction and convergence could also take place at an individual level with people being given a ‘carbon credit card’.

But it could be a long time before contraction and convergence is translated from an equitable theory into practical political reality. In the meantime, governments – particularly those in the rich world – need to act. They need to cut out the tax concessions, ensure aviation pays its full environmental and social costs, promote the railways and abandon plans for any new runways or airports. Only once government sets this new framework is it realistic to expect the majority of people to make different choices about taking a flight.

The pledge comes as a direct follow-up to the government’s plans to carry out the biggest single programme of aviation expansion that the UK has ever seen. The Future of Air Transport, the December 2003 aviation white paper, predicted that by 2030 figures for UK airport passengers would be three times the number that they are today. In response, the government is proposing new runways at airports that could include Stansted, Heathrow or Gatwick, Birmingham, Edinburgh and Glasgow, as well as significant expansion at other British airports.

Such a narrow ‘predict and provide’ approach to transport has a precedent in policies on road-building. However, a key difference between the mass campaigns against road expansion in the 1990s and the campaign currently building up against aviation expansion, is that the latter is attempting to show the strength of its supporter base at an early stage. A very public and very large level of opposition against Thatcher’s ‘predict and provide’ road-building programme did not really take off until the 1990s, when the direction of development was set and construction work was well on its way. Today, many of the proposed aviation schemes are right back at the starting block. George Marshall of the climate change campaign Rising Tide says: ‘We really have a chance of stopping these plans if we can show early on that the political risk for the government in pushing this issue could be huge.’

Marshall points out the impact that the pledge could have on the funding needed for airport developments to go ahead. ‘Take Stansted, where a vast amount of private money is needed for the proposed expansion,’ he says. ‘If any high street bank, for example, should consider backing this project I would like to be able to go to them and suggest that the scale of opposition, illustrated by the number of pledge signatories, creates a high level of risk for the bank, making airport expansion a very poor investment.’

Opponents to airport expansion have already scored one significant victory, for The Future of Air Transport is the first white paper ever to face a judicial review. Campaigners have been given permission to present evidence to the High Court that the document was fundamentally flawed and reached conclusions that were irrational and inconsistent with the government’s own policies and with the consultation ground rules. Such inconsistencies have been clearly spelled out by the House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee. The committee’s March 2004 aviation report concluded: ‘If aviation emissions increase on the scale predicted by the Department for Transport, the UK’s 60 per cent carbon emission reduction target, which the government set last year, will become meaningless and unachievable.’

Pledge campaigners point to the many different aviation strategies that could be pursued, from developing a high-quality rail system in the UK and eliminating the need for internal flights, to ending the massive tax breaks currently enjoyed by the aviation industry. ‘The action needed to cut back on carbon emissions that accelerate climate change is completely within our reach,’ says Marshall. ‘In the case of the pledge and the campaign to oppose aviation expansion, the key to being effective lies in the numbers. It all comes down to individuals making that personal commitment and signing the pledge.’

www.airportpledge.org.uk