Uttlesford District Council today rejected a planning application to expand the capacity at Stansted Airport submitted by the Spanish owned firm BAA who run the airport. The company intends to appeal against the ruling. Read about it HERE.
I like cheap flights, I like Stansted airport (very handy from Norwich and it is well designed), and if I moved to the Uttlesford District Council area knowing that their is a major international airport in the area that has long been earmarked for expansion, I would not expect to oppose it. However, there are more serious issues than noise pollution at work here and my liking of cheap flights is tempered by my concern about global warming.
There will have to come a time when a proper levy is put on aviation fuel worldwide (it cannot be done just in Britain because airlines will simply fill their planes up abroad so it will have little effect) so that something is done to halt the inexorable rise in air travel which is only fuelling the rise in CO2 emmissions and making the greenhouse effect worse.
So for whatever reasons Uttlesford District Council made their decision today, and it might well be for the very worst NIMBY reasons, I don't know, I think it is probably the correct one for the environment as a whole, and not just for a small part of East Hertfordshire and Essex.
I like cheap flights, I like Stansted airport (very handy from Norwich and it is well designed), and if I moved to the Uttlesford District Council area knowing that their is a major international airport in the area that has long been earmarked for expansion, I would not expect to oppose it. However, there are more serious issues than noise pollution at work here and my liking of cheap flights is tempered by my concern about global warming.
There will have to come a time when a proper levy is put on aviation fuel worldwide (it cannot be done just in Britain because airlines will simply fill their planes up abroad so it will have little effect) so that something is done to halt the inexorable rise in air travel which is only fuelling the rise in CO2 emmissions and making the greenhouse effect worse.
So for whatever reasons Uttlesford District Council made their decision today, and it might well be for the very worst NIMBY reasons, I don't know, I think it is probably the correct one for the environment as a whole, and not just for a small part of East Hertfordshire and Essex.
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