News: Extremist environmental group wants all short-haul flights banned
Flights > News > # 993 (02/10/2006)
An anti-aviation group called Plane Stupid, which recently staged a direct action protest at Nottingham East Midlands airport, is calling for the immediate cessation of all short-haul flights.
The group's website is calling for a national day of action against short-haul flights on November 6.
A Plane Stupid spokesman told Flightmapping that most European flights should be banned, adding: “In terms of (the banning) of short-haul flights, we mean flights to destinations so close they're easily reachable by other more sustainable means. So, that includes almost all of Europe."
The group specifically wants to target flights of less than 500 kilometres, which they say can easily be made by alternative modes of transport such as train, bus or ferry.
“45% of all flights in Europe are to destinations less than 500 kilometres away. That's the same as from London to the Scottish border, places easily reachable by train, bus or ferry alternatives - all of which are over ten times less polluting. Aviation is the fastest growing cause of climate change and unless we end all short-haul flights, climate catastrophe awaits," the spokesman said.
Numerous environmental organisations have been highly critical of the government's long-term proposals for the expansion of aviation, but this is the first time such drastic measures have been called for.
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Comment:
The calls being made by this group are fabulously daft, so why give them the oxygen of publicity? Part of the reason is to highlight just how ludicrous some of the anti-aviation arguments have become, but also to point out how going after short-haul flights will only have a limited environmental benefit.
Comments such as “living under a flight path is like living on a motorway” give away the real reasons for the existence of this group - the usual thinly veiled nimbyism hiding behind the excuse of climate change.
Whilst it might well be perfectly true that on a mile by mile basis, short-haul flights are usually more damaging to the environment, they are still only responsible for between ten and 20% of aviation’s contribution to climate change. Large amounts of fuel are consumed during taxiing, take off and ascent, but there is already a huge economic disincentive against these flights, courtesy of the £5 air passenger duty, and hefty airport handling charges, much of which goes back into local economies through job creation, and the profits that airport-owning local authorities reap from these fees.
Just because these flights could, in theory, be replaced by rail travel does not necessarily mean that they should. Even if we accept the argument that train travel causes significantly lower carbon dioxide emissions, the number of air routes which could reasonably be transferred over to the rail network represents a relatively small proportion of existing departures from UK airports, and an even smaller proportion of emissions.
The ever increasing clamour against short-haul flights, especially those operated by the no-frills airlines, is always going to be thoroughly ineffective if long-haul flights are kept out of emissions trading schemes. More notably, the no-frills airlines have been a phenomenal business success story, which should be celebrated, rather than criticised. How many of the rallying cries against aviation are really about that classic British resentment of success, flavoured with a healthy pinch of snobbery against the “plebs” accessing affordable flights, and how many are really about trying to find solutions to what is clearly a challenging problem?
More investment in high-speed rail facilities, or indeed in Maglevs, is a great idea in principle. Unfortunately, these huge infrastructure projects will inevitably require massive state interference on a scale far greater than the planning approvals needed for airport expansion. At least new air routes can be developed by private enterprise, with little risk to the taxpayer. If a rail infrastructure project goes wrong, you can’t just rip up the tracks and start again, but airlines can adapt their schedules much more easily. After the shambolic failures of the West Coast mainline upgrade, how much confidence can we have in the ability of any government to make any such scheme work?
Plane Stupid’s criticisms of the aviation industry then move on to the economic arguments, some of which are perfectly legitimate, especially with regards to the so-called tourism deficit, i.e. the difference between the amount of money spent by inbound tourists and the amount of money British tourists spend abroad. We then hear the regularly repeated line about aviation allegedly being subsidised to the tune of £9 billion per year, yet none of these groups have ever explained how an industry can be deemed to be subsidised, just because it is not taxed at a certain rate.
Perhaps most disconcerting is Plane Stupid’s argument that the money which is not being collected by a tax on aviation could be used to pay the tuition fees of over three million students. We know this is an even more contentious issue than the environment, but we think there are already far too many students pursuing degrees which will do little to enhance their employment prospects, without the need for three million more. Notwithstanding all the trees which would have to suffer due to the production of three million irrelevant dissertations, we really do hope that Plane Stupid can take some more lessons from the University of Life, and rethink their arguments, before more of our attention seeking politicians start taking groups like this too seriously. Unfortunately, this week’s Conservative party conference show that it might already be too late for John Gummer and Steven Norris, but at least the more relevant Tories seem to have some commonsense.
