It\’s Getting Hot In Here

Tony Blair was far from perfect on climate change. Under his leadership emissions from Britain actually rose significantly. But one thing Blair did do was sign Britain up to tough European targets for 20% of Britain’s energy – including electricity, transport and heat – to come from renewable sources by 2020. So you can imagine how activists reacted when it emerged that Prime Minister Brown was being advised by his business minister on how to wriggle out of them! For a moment it looked like Brown was taking Britain from international leader to international spoiler and following in the footsteps of his US counterpart in trying to wreck international climate efforts.

Well, the good news is that following intense pressure and public humiliation, not least after a dressing-down by Greenpeace director John Sauven, on the BBC’s Newsnight, Gordon Brown was forced into publicly re-committing Britain to the 2020 renewables target. In his first major climate speech, Brown last week pledged Labour would get serious on low-carbon energy.

That was on the Monday. But by Wednesday, plans for the first new coal-fired power station in the UK for more than thirty years were back on the table and being considered by a local authority in Kent near London. And by Thursday, Brown’s government were launching their plans for a massive growth in air transport from what is already the world’s busiest airport, Heathrow.

The new coal plant alone, were it approved, would pollute more than thirty least polluting countries in the world. It will be so inefficient it will waste over half of all the energy that it creates and there’s a real danger that it will set a precedent and open the flood gates to a whole new generation of dirty coal plants. Indeed, another seven are already being planned by the energy companies. Were they all approved, they would emit more than fifty million tonnes of CO2 per year and knock Britain totally off course from its emission reduction targets. Whilst the rhetoric is all about CCS technology, even the British Chancellor admits that carbon capture is “still in the foothills” and “may never work.” Even the industry themselves admit that CCS won’t be commercially viable until at least 2020.

With the IPCC estimating we have just 100 months until tipping point, resistance to Big Carbon is mounting. Greenpeace have occupied and temporarily shut down the existing coal plant on the site of the proposed new one, and more than 10,000 people wrote to the local authority too. Following the summer’s Camp for Climate Action, Plane Stupid blockaded a domestic flights terminal at Manchester airport and a huge coalition against airport expansion has been formed with members ranging from the Mayor of London to all of the local governmental authorities and MPs, right through to development agencies and national environment groups. Here some of the voices here.

Thankfully, across the pond here, momentum is finally gathering.

Here in the UK, aviation has become the political hot potato it surely should be. Getting on a plane is the single most environmentally damaging thing that you can do and flying is already the fastest growing cause of global warming. The leading British climate scientists at Oxford University’s Environmental Change Institute and the University of Manchester’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research have both published reports recently which highlight the flat contradiction between the British government and aviation industry’s plans for a massive growth in aviation and the imperative requirement to reduce greenhouse gas emissions.

In Britain, the growth in flying has become the public frontline in the fight against rising carbon emissions. Over the last year, activists from Plane Stupid, the group I helped establish, have broken into airports, occupied airline offices and disrupted aviation industry conferences. In the past month, things came to something of a climax as BAA – the company who own and operate almost all of Britain’s airports – took legal action to try and prevent protestors from camping outside London’s Heathrow airport to protest against plans for a new runway. Thousands turned up anyway. Read about it here.

In 2008 Prime Minister Gordon Brown – who holds a cosy relationship with the aviation industry, will have to decide whether or not he is going to ignore the science and the majority of the public who oppose aviation expansion. He knows that if he does he’ll have a fight on his hands.