It was a touch depressing to read this in the FT today:
Gatwick airport is to push ahead with expansion despite the hit to the business from the pandemic and mounting concerns over aviation's impact on the environment. The UK's second busiest airport will launch a public consultation next month to bring its standby runway into regular use at a cost of £500m, increasing annual passenger capacity by two-thirds over the next two decades to more than 70m.
We face a climate crisis, but as the FT also notes, the expansion is consistent with government policy, which anticipates demand for flying increasing by 50 per cent from 2018 levels by 2050. Climate change has not changed that. The plan is instead that flying will continue on the basis of new fuels or other hydrogen or electric-powered aircraft.
Do I think that is likely? Candidly, I do not. I see no chance of that change happening: if it was going to I think we would be seeing a lot more progress than the very limited number of experimental battery-powered aircraft of extraordinarily limited capacity now being trialled.
But at the core of this plan is a much more worrying assumption. It is that we can continue to justify building the aircraft themselves, and still meet climate change requirements. And it is also assumed that we can continue to consume as if the planet can forever sustain our every desire. Neither of those assumptions is in any way consistent with the demands that the planet is actually imposing on us to consume less.
Gatwick is, of course, the airport that already claims it is a zero-carbon location - by conveniently ignoring the vast amounts of carbon that the jets going down its runways send into the atmosphere. These emissions, defined as 'scope 3' by the greenhouse gas protocols, can currently be ignored by the proposed climate accounting put forward by the Task Force on Climate-related Financial Disclosures and the International Financial Reporting Standard Foundation, because they are assumed to be the responsibility of 'someone else'. That, ultimately, is an argument that can always be resolved by blaming the emissions on the final consumer - which is the way I suspect many businesses will seek to deny their responsibility for the environmental harms they will be causing in coming years.
But this excuse is not true. Gatwick already facilitates vast carbon consumption of a form that is wholly unnecessary, and which is created by a relatively small part of the population: most people do not fly on holiday each year, and it is a small minority who consume most flights, and then almost entirely for leisure purposes.
So, the question is, why is this matter even being considered now? What sort of insanity is this? And when will we get our heads around the fact that climate change is going to demand that we change our consumption behaviour unless that is we want to see the planet destroyed as we continue to struggle to live on it? Will the messages of climate change damage, now so apparent, never sink in? It would seem not, at least with the management of Gatwick airport.
And yes, whilst I mention it, this is a reason for sustainable cost accounting. That accounting system is deliberately designed to inject reality into business decision making. Gatwick seeks to be basing its thinking on fantasies. Something ash to bring it down to the ground.
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I dont know if anyone has read Dr Tim Morgans blog, Surplus Energy Economics
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
He made an interesting point a while ago about the forecasts for the expansion in air travel, where was the fuel going to come from? There is a finite limit at which oil can be pumped from the ground and increasing production enough for a 50% increase in demand for jet fuel isnt going to happen.
Its rather the same sort of delusion that had Hermann Goering planning for a 20000 plane Luftwaffe prior to WW2, despite Germany not having access to anything like enough oil to fuel it.
Unfortunately there’s a simple answer to ‘where will the fuel come from’. As we switch from petrol/diesel to EVs we’ll need a lot less fuel for road transport. That would be enough to fuel air travel for several decades.
So fuel shortage will not solve this problem – we need laws.
“at a cost of £500m”, begging the question…..which bank (or “institutional investor”) is funding this? One assumes that the airport has not been filling its piggy bank for this eventuality.
These sort of developments (& there are many) fall into the “if your only tool is a hammer….etc”. Gatwick is based on the imperative of gradual but infinite expansion – the foundation stone of western capitalism. Planetary climate disasters and their medium term impacts come second.
I am having related problems with a UK DNO – who is putting profit before de-carb (their profit before my de-carb project which would erode the DNO/mafia’s revenues).
On a related note, had some drinks with European Commission people the other night. Some of them very senior. They give it circa 30 years by which time we will see generalised civilisational collapse. They are making their own plans for community survival. Unless something significant happens (it won’t) this is the dialled in trajectory.
PS: Maersk – biggest shipper on the planet will de-carb its operations (i.e. its ships). Cost? Approximately 9 UScents on the cost of a pair of trainers shipped from China to Europe. Showing that de-carb does not cost the earth, but will if it does not happen fast. BTW: this de-carb could have been done at least 5 – 6 years ago – that is was not is due to the IMO and various Arab oil states.
Mike, if these member so the European Commission think that civilization has only about 30 years to run, as it were, what are they intending to do about it where they are?
Moving to places that they think will have a reasonable chance of survival. I don’t blame them btw – they have tired to make a difference – but the Commission like many large orgs moves rather slowly & is influenced by many many otuside players. Personally, I do not think it is too late to turn things around – that said, the period 2010 to 2020 was a lost decade and if we don’t collectively get our skates on 2020 to 2030 will be the decade where things are decided one way or another.
The problem is that governments, and businesses will say that we need to continue on this merry go round to “compete” and to ensure the shareholders get their money, because, at the final reckoning, thats what it’s all about, the profit. They will point out that if they don’t, someone else will, and pacify with the excuse that science will sort it out long before the point of no return is reached. It’s sad, but true, that the majority of people just shrug and say that it’s somebody else’s problem.
It only takes a tiny number of people to change the world if they have the right idea
That has always been true
I knew there was something dodgy abut the last ownership change of Gatwick. I expect we will see more when it is too late.
I wonder an expansion of Gatwick fits with Heathrow’s third runway (which I’ll also believe when I see it).
It seems Gatwick is owned just over 50% by Vinci (the French infrastructure company) and just under 50% by Global Infrastructure Partners (a private equity fund, with investors including sovereign funds from Australia and Abu Dhabi, and pension funds from California and South Korea).
You’d think that with all that time we’ve had they’d have been planning something else eh?
Oh well.
They say one the biggest banes of society is addiction?
Seems it’s true.
The Climate Change Committee’s Net Zero pathway assumes 25% increase in flights from now till 2050 but no net increase in airport capacity, so Gatwick can go ahead but other airports have to shut runways or otherwise restrict 29m passengers a year. Yeah – right.
Anyone see that documentary where the left brain was separated from the right to lessen epilepsy, with the resulting weird dysfunction? That’s how the Govt and others deal with Climate Change, they accept the science then act as if they don’t.
‘they accept the science then act as if they don’t.’
That my dear boy is AGNOTOLOGY in action.
It’s all about PR – the act of pronouncing that you agree with something or want to do something (also, remember Theresa May’s ‘injustices’) that salves the minds of the public who think something is being done and all is well with the world whilst in fact NOTHING is being done at all.
Straightforward public misrepresentation. This is a Boris Johnson government after all.
There is a very useful organisation called Aviation Environment Federation (AEF) which keeps a professional and legal watch on these events. Often there are Government consultations on Aviation launched with not much advertising. There’s currently one under way. AEF keeps a look out and makes sure it follows up with whatever legal submissions might be useful. It’s worth joining. Often amazing what can be done organisationally like the Good Law Project.