Climate change and anti-airport expansion protest at Heathrow - are you with the protesters or BAA?

[Callisto]

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/6943549.stm

The protesters are probably people who've given up trying to pass through the airport. That is their holiday .

totally with the protestors and those who think the use of terrorism as social control is scary and redolent of Mrs T and the Criminal Justice Bill.
But please read here. When you have finished pysl at the cliches and kneejerk reactions, it's quite scary how insanely in denial many people are.
newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspathreadID=7115&&edition=1&ttl=20070813203336

it's the bbc have your say thing, in case the link doesn't work.

I haven't read the entire thread, but the world is moving on apace, and I think that many of the issues and arguments raised will be dead in the water in twenty or thirty years time due to technological advances.

For instance, we're still using the internal combustion engine to propel cars: exactly the same principal that was invented in the late nineteenth century. Time for a change? I think so.

Personally I think the whole frenzy about global warming is a lot of bollocks, but that's just me (the daughter of a time-serving meteorologist who also thinks it's largely bunkum).

The desire to be seen to be 'doing' something about climate change has become the new religion. People should take from it what they need, but they should resist the temptation to be totally absorbed by it.

From Desiradata "For instance, we're still using the internal combustion engine to propel cars: exactly the same principal that was invented in the late nineteenth century. Time for a change? I think so".

If it was that easy it would have been done a long time ago and people have tried. The first law of thermodynamics says that matter (ie energy) cannot be created or destroyed but it can be interconverted. One of the holy grails for engineers is to produce a perpetual motion machine but of course, this law precludes that ever happening but in time, some genius will find a way of using the laws of physics to overcome this problem.

That is why in 1989, the world went into a frenzy when Pons and Fleischman published (prematurely as it turns out) their nascent research on cold nuclear fusion. If their research had been as successful as they claimed, they would be extremely rich now!

BP use to stand for British Petroleum but now it is Beyond Petroleum. Oil companies are rebranding themselves as energy companies because they recognise that if they are going to have a future, they need to seek alternative sources of energy. That is why they have been and will continue to spend millions of pounds/dollars on research e.g., BP providing $500m to fund the Bioresearch Centre at UCL Berkeley in California.

I also think there is too much blustering about climate change when the emphasis should be about the sustainability of our natural resources.

With the protesters.

Also I think its bad that the police are going to use anti-terror laws if they feel they need to, to arrest the protestors. I don't believe thats what the anti-terror laws were brought in for and at the time the government promised that they would only be used for proper terrorist incidents, not as a way of curtailing civil liberties. Its only taken a couple of years and its staretd.

Here, here, speedymama 09:31:16!

Very salient point!

Agree totally with spidermama re: blustering about climate change. I think we've lost our way with all the emphasis on carbon neutral. Carbon isn't the be all and end all - it's sustainability and sensible resource management that is the key, the rest will follow on from that.

I understand their concern over environmental issues and the wish to be seen to be doing something about it.

However - i question the motives and committment of some of the protestors. Can these people honestly say that they are never going to fly on a plane for the whole of their lives? I doubt it. Some of the youngsters involved are just doing it because it is a trendy and fun thing to do and will forget all about it when they have a job and a family in later years. We have to pay for the massive security bill just so they can have a bit of fun and justify it to themselves.

I remember being asked to get involved in the Newbury by-pass protests by some friends when i was at Uni. They would be causing criminal damage, laying in front of trucks, etc., and wasting everyones time. My theory was that the road was going to built whatever they did and i had the foresight to see that i would someday be driving down that road and i didn't want to be a hypocrite. It was just a silly phase they were passing through where they wanted to be seen to be anti-this-and-that just for the fun of it.

Surprise, surprise - i met one of these guys that gave me a mouthful for me arguing with them a few years ago and he looked the picture of corporate bliss. He had a job in insurance, a family, a car and annual holidays abroad. It turns out that i was actually the one who ended up having the least impact on the environment.

Flying abroad now and again for a holiday is everybody's privilage and i for one will not be giving that right up. I go on UK holidays every other year (this year was 2 weeks in a log cabin in Wales - excellent!) and use the train when i go down to London every month.

Plane travel is only a small percentage of the emissions output in the world. There are plenty of other less glamorous and fun things we can all do to lessen our impact. I think we need to concentrate more on what our industries are doing and what we ourselves are doing in our own lives. For example - some of these protestors may even be encouraging air travel by buying goods when they are out shopping that are flown form half-way around the world. They should be checking their belongings for any 'Made In China' labels.

I just resent the fact that i am being made to pay for a small percentage of short-sighted people to have a few fun stories to tell their mates. The Police have a lot more pressing matters to deal with in this country such as all the horrific issues that this forum regularly discuss.

I would hate to get knifed by a gang of teenage thugs and the last thought to go through my mind was "I wish one of the 1800 police assigned babysitting duties at Heathrow was here right now".

A bit of a silly analogy - but you get my drift.

Rant over. Back to work!........

In 1995, a paper was published in Science that showed that Rice agriculture is possibly the biggest source of anthropogenic methane. So, do we have to stop eating rice now? I hope not.

cows are a huge producer of methane. I'm quite in favour of cutting down industrialized farming and not eating so much beef and dairy though.

'I also think there is too much blustering about climate change when the emphasis should be about the sustainability of our natural resources.'

WRT Heathrow, apart from anything else, why does the whole fecking country have to go via here anyway? Can't fly to bloody Nice, Geneva, Basle etc direct from Manchester any more and it's a PITA. I was working yesterday at a client's office and she was saying how it's had quite an impact on their business to suddenly not be able to fly to European cities directly from the 'international' airport 10 minutes down the road.

I've often wondered that myself Gobble. We've dozens of regional airports in the UK yet BAA and the gov. seem to want to channel the majority of flights through airports that are already oversubscribed.

I live near Stansted which is up for expansion. Tbh the airport doesn't bother me but it is a crying shame to expand here as there is practically zero unemployment, when it would bring much needed jobs and revenue in somewhere in the North.

I know that I will probably be a lone voice in saying this but imho, the reality, whether we want to accept it or not, is that London is one of the most important financial centres in the world and lot of business is conducted in and around that region. Air travel is here to stay and Heathrow is one of the most important transit airports in the world.

France have been ugrading CDG airport and so have our other major competitors. I personally think that it is ludicrous that Heathrow only has two runways and it desperately needs a third if it is to remain a world class airport.

All the carping about concreting green land blah blah blah is a red herring because only a fraction of the land in the UK is actually urbanised.

Politicians need to do what is right for the economic future of the UK and the fact is, London is at the heart of that. What needs to change is peoples attitude to flying. Nobody has the right to fly, it is a privilege and should be treated as such. Unfortunately, it has become a cheap commodity, especially thanks to the budget airlines.

nice to see that motherhood hasn't made everyone all gooey and sentimental, you know, wanting to have a bit of this earth left for our kids to survive on and all that...
. after all we mustn't let finite natural resources interfere with the "need" for economic growth.
haven't gone down there with my wee one (although was there 9 mths preggers at the last)cos haven't acclimitised him to camping yet,and didn't think a gobful of CS gas was the right introduction. hope he'll be hard enough soon though.
and yes, hypocrite maybe, we do travel by car sometimes. you can't exist within industrial capitalism without being a part of it, its one of the ironies of living within a system you are opposed to.
speedymama - the 'green land' you are refering to, isn't vital land, rich in biodiversity, not ancient woodland. its monoculture fields grown for industrial agriculture. about as useful as concrete in terms of ecology.
but you are right in that capitalism is incompatible with ecology. its more than airport expansion we have to stop. its the whole bloody lot thats got to come down.

Who said anything about capitalism being incompatible with ecology?

"we mustn't let finite natural resources interfere with the "need" for economic growth".

If you read my previous posts you would have seen that I have said that I rather we focused our energies on sustaining our natural resources rather than carping on about climate change. In spring, the weather forecasters said that summer 2007 was going to be hottest summer ever.......

I personally don't see being green as incompatible with a thriving economy. One of the fastest emerging economic sectors is that provided by the environmental market. Where else are we going to get the greener vehicles, greener energy provision, greener manufacturing processes, the financial resources to invest in public transport etc if we don't have a strong and vibrant economy?

Capitalism, believe it or not, is the launch pad for entrepenurial enterprise and those people and companies with ideas,vision, motivation, dedication, tenacity, diligence and a small dose of serendipity will be the ones who will capitalise on the emerging green economy. Why do you think the Americans, that great bastion of capitalism, are investing so much in seeking alternative energy sources to fossil fuels? Because there is money to be made!
Would you prefer it if there was no economic growth?

capitalism could be compatible with ecology if people were not so greedy and shortn sighted, which unfortunately many people are in business. the kind of new technologies you talk about speedymama would definitely be the way forward, but why are, for example, lpg cars and cars like Toyota prius priced so that only the very rich can afford them? we have to make clear the demand for cleaner and greener options before business will catch up. At the moment most of us don't care enough.

"green" consumerism is indeed an increasingly profitable market. unfortunately its all greenwash bollocks isn't it? palm oil is being hyped as the new big thing, the 'green' fuel. unfortunately its palm oil plantations which are wiping out the forests in the philippines (and the tribes and many species that live there)so to provide this new "green" fuel, to build new "greener" cars (requiring metals from the mining industry, which is taking out land repeat repeat!!)

EricL - and yes,surely some of the many participants protesting might not be committed for the rest of their lives. like at any protest. but actually, if you had bothered to go to any of the anti-road protests you would have found that people are still involved in organising and orchestrating environmental protest. some of whom do that alongside jobs and families. of course, for some, for many, it isn't forever. but you know, people get damned as "seasoned protestors" if they stay the course, and as ingenuine if they don't! a little unfair i think.

Also, yes, the Newbury Bypass did get built, and yes, is the total calamity that was predicted. However, the massive cost of policing road protests meant that a whopping 80% of the overall road programme got slashed.

As for the arguement that people shouldn't protest cos of the bill for policing it....what?!? does that mean nobody should protest about anything??

direct action isn't a new invention. it goes back a lot further than the anti-roads movement too. women fought for the right to vote by enormous economic damage...eg, one day cost a million in the City of London. it wasn't just chaining to railings (that happened only once as far as i know). and women's suffrage was a mildmannered affair compared to how most of our "rights" were won. and the direct action movement now is a piss in the ocean compared to our whole rich history of resistance to oppression, on this wee island and every other. indeed, a prize to anyone who can name a (so-called) human right that HASN'T been battled for!

Reading back my original message i think my argument is a litle shallow because of my history. I guess i have a prejudiced view of the type of people that live for these protests as i was brought with two 'hippies/travellers' who were complete hypocrites and just lived to cause trouble for the sake of it. They never practised what they preached and neither did a lot of their friends.

I admit that these people make up just a small part of these protesters.

I still think the airport should be allowed to meet demand but likewise there should be some effort to try and educate the public into reducing that demand in the first place.

I have reduced my demand on this industry by going on a UK holiday every other year and taking the train down to London from now on.

If i want to fly at other times then i am going to without any hestitation.

I don't need this silly fun-fair at the airport to demand a change my behaviour.

i think many of us...me included...can find it hard not to view any step down from our current lifestyle as if we are doing something good, and any demand that we consume less or more ethically is seen as a burden on us. so, if we take the train or recycle we think we are doing
"our bit" but thats seeing it in terms of morality not actuality. we might be making a bit more effort, but this doesn't offset the enormous cost of our real footprint. we don't have any "right' to our current lifestyle. the actuality is that this planet can't physically sustain the aviation industry. or all the other industries. and its not that people are being 'told off' for stuff, its just the facts.

MaeBee, the debacle around palm oil is an example of why we should be focusing our energies on ensuring that developments are sustainable in terms of the environment, especially with respect to local economies and local ecosystems. If a robust system engineering approach had been taken, then the impact on the many different subsystems would have hightlighted from the outset the risks/damage/danger to the land, people, animals, local economy etc.

Unfortunately in business, logic and fidelity are often overruled in favour of the bottom line and that is the major downside of capitalism, imo.

it really pisses me off when people say 'i'm going to do this because i want to so nah' Everyone in the west who has been born post second world war has been brought up in the most decadent, natural resource squandering age ever to occur on this planet, where we think it is our 'right' to consume as many natural resources as possible - er, why? Our grandparents didn't get that opportunity, and neither will our grandchildren. Lifestyles will have to change, if we want to keep this planet in the way we now take for granted. Why can't people take a little bit of responsibility and look further than their own blardy nose?

Well we are not going to fly if we can help it.

The campaigner in me is wishing I was right there with them! I love it when the so called "little people" take on the might of the large companies. It shows that we can still have a voice. No matter where you stand on the debate, the very fact that people can make their voices known still, that people still have the commitment and incentive to want to do something active, must surely hearten you? Apathy is the greatest disease ever known to man, so when I see people dedicating their time to protest, to stand against the might of corporations, well it brings a tear to my eye I tell thee!

Personally I would strip naked and handcuff meself to one of the aeroplanes. But that's just me!

Disagree about this planet being able to sustain the aviation industry. What we are not able to sustain is an indefinite supply of fossil fuel. However, if something like cold nuclear fusion ever becomes reality, then we will have a endless supply of clean energy which could be harnessed for cars, aeroplanes, trains etc.