The decision to allow Heathrow's Terminal 5 will add to the social,environmental and economic problems associated with aviation - and has blown New Labour's pretence to be Green, say Jean Lambert, Green MEP for London, and Darren Johnson, leader of the Greens on the GLA.
The government has just had a perfect opportunity to tackle one of its thorniest environmental problems - and has blown it. And with it, Tony Blair must surely have finally destroyed any pretence that New Labour is 'green'.
It still seems that few people are aware of this, but aviation is the most highly-polluting transport mode on earth, and the fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. But it's not just an environmental problem: its pollution constitutes a major hidden cost to the economy, in the region of £4 billion a year. Worse yet, to cause this pollution, the UK subsidises its aviation industry to the tune of £6 billion worth of tax breaks a year. And the industry pays us back by being a major drain on the UK balance of payments; some £3.5 billion a year, not including the costs of importing fuel and aircraft.
This is why the current recession in the air transport industry offered hope of an important change in direction - a change offering social, environmental and economic advantages. We'd have a chance to tackle climate change if emissions reductions in some areas weren't being undone by increases from a rapidly growing aviation sector. We'd have a chance to put the subsidies into sustainable transport, including alternatives to a high proportion of flights. But the government, rather than know a good opportunity when it saw one, simply insisted that the recession in aviation was temporary, and that business as usual must go on. So it approved Terminal 5.
What are the consequences of that decision? Well, the health costs of air pollution from the UK aviation sector alone are estimated at more than £1.3 billion a year. The economic costs of aircraft noise are estimated at £313 million a year. UK aviation's contribution to climate change will probably cost over £2 billion this year. The overall hidden economic costs of the European Union's aviation sector are currently estimated at £14.3 billion a year - of which the UK alone accounts for £3.782 billion, or 26%. This doesn't include the costs of aviation accidents and accident services. Is this the sort of industry we should be promoting by allowing colossal increases in capacity?
Unless governments radically change tack, aviation's CO2 emissions are expected to have increased by 588% between 1992 and 2050, and its Nox pollution by 411% - notwithstanding advances in engine technology. By 2050, aviation could be contributing up to 15% of the overall global warming effect produced by human activities - with staggering economic costs.
This is the scenario the aviation industry wants us to accept. It wants UK air passenger numbers to increase from 130 million in 1995 to 400 million in 2020 - the equivalent of an extra 4 airports the size of Heathrow or 12 new airports the size of Manchester. It forecasts such growth that by 2020 demand would be rising by about 15 million passengers a year - equivalent to needing a new Gatwick every 2 years. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution agrees that the current growth of aviation isn't compatible with sustainable development. Yet this madness is what thegovernment was, and is, meekly accepting, despite all Tony Blair's rhetoric about 'putting the environment at the heart of government', the 'fragile blue ball suspended in space', making Britain a 'showcase for sustainable development', and the rest. Of course it's possible that these impressive figures represent merely the self-fulfilling prophecy of the aviation industry's econometricists and spindoctors. The notorious concept of 'predict and provide', long since discredited in the realm of roadbuilding, still holds sway in aviation. That is, we make outrageous predictions about what the public wants, we build the capacity to accommodate the hypothetical growth, and in the meantime we do all in our power to stimulate demand to meet the predictions. And if anyone questions any of this, they're told that such growth is inevitable - as though it weren't being driven hard by a combination of heavy marketing, government policy and taxpayer subsidy.
The shock of 11 September provided pause for thought. Of course the industry blamed terrorism for its problems as it began making redundancies. Some of us believe the industry was pulling a fast one - taking an opportunity to rationalise its personnel structures, while asking the government for even more subsidies. But that isn't the issue. The key point here was that for the first time in decades the 'inevitable' rapid growth in aviation was seen to be somewhat less inevitable; in fact, that recession was possible. And if it can happen now because of terrorism, or simply because the industry was starting to over-reach itself, then surely the same could happen again. And perhaps greater reductions in air transport might be possible as a result of growing public awareness of aviation's ecological and economic costs. So perhaps we should have replaced 'predict and provide' with a rational policy of making aviation sustainable?
Tony Blair could have breathed a sigh of relief over the recession in aviation. Previously, when rapid growth was 'inevitable' and therefore must be 'accommodated', he was perhaps wondering how to make the unsustainable appear sustainable in the face of all the evidence; how he might meet even Labour's unambitious CO2 targets in the face of an aviation industry that doesn't think there's a problem. Surely the gulf between his rhetoric and his policies couldn't be sustained indefinitely, and here was a way to improve his standard of consistency. But instead, he decided to try to get the aviation industry back on track again; to reinstate the problem.
It would be hard enough to make aviation sustainable. Experts have assessed that the application of a fairer tax regime could cut UK passenger numbers to 59% of the figure forecast for 2020. But even then, passenger numbers would still have increased by almost 150% during1998-2020.
He might have achieved this, with the aid of an increasingly aware public.If he'd told people that aviation's tax-breaks and externalities amount to the equivalent of every man, woman and child in the UK donating an average £182.45 to the aviation industry every year, he might have struck a chord. He might have suggested it was anomalous that aeroplanes and everything to do with them are zero-rated for VAT, costing the treasury £1.8 billion a year. He might have taken a bold stance and said that if we tax aviation fuel ultimately at the same rate as unleaded petrol (and why not? - it seems so obvious), this would eventually raise £5 billion a year. This would make an impressive investment in sustainable transport - including surface alternatives to a very high proportion of flights (since almost 70% of flights in European airspace are of 500km or less, and would thus be replaceable by high-speed trains). After all, why not subsidise forms of travel that help mitigate the social, environmental and economic catastrophe that is climate change, rather than an industry that does morethan most to help cause it?
He might have questioned the wisdom of society as a whole having to foot the bill for building and maintaining the surface transport infrastructure which serves airports - costs which partly undo the revenue-raising from airport taxes. He might even have dared suggest that more of us should holiday in the UK next year, helping both the country's balance of payments and a domestic tourist industry battered by foot-and-mouth disease.
The decision over Terminal 5 could have marked a new era. New Labour could have put some substance behind its environmental rhetoric. It could have taken a major step in tackling climate change, begun to seriously address the scandal of aviation's externalised costs, and raised the revenue to give massive pump-priming to sustainable transport infrastructure, creating sustainable jobs to replace those lost in aviation.
But instead it marked a victory for business-as-usual over more forward-thinking economics, and a barrier to the creation of a sustainable society. One more reason why we need a government that's genuinely Green, not just rhetorically so.
Further reading: see publications by Caroline Lucas MEP, Professor John Whitelegg and Dr Spencer Fitz-Gibbon at www.greenparty.org.uk/reports .
ENDS