Airport plan will send out wrong message on environment

From: Christopher Foren, Chair, GALBA (Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport).

BUSINESS Editor Mark Casci does his best to act as cheerleader for the expansion of Leeds Bradford Airport (The Yorkshire Post, June 1), but he overlooks the fact that the airport is overwhelmingly used by holidaymakers rather than business people.

A brief glance at the list of destinations proves this: most of the destinations are in Spain and Greece, not Germany. And your readers will have noticed that British Airways has announced that it will no longer be operating a service from Leeds to Heathrow.

This move was not brought about by the action of objectors or regulators. It was the operation of market forces. Put simply, business people find it easier (and quicker) to take the train. Mr Casci states that the passenger terminal plan “is so convincing that the airport’s owner AMP Capital has agreed to fund the plan out of its own pocket”. The airport is a private business and is owned by an investment company based in Australia, which is where any profits go. Who else should pay?

If AMP Capital really believed it would attract more business passengers with a new terminal, then it could have proceeded with plans for that. In fact, such a proposal was granted planning permission in 2018, but AMP decided not to proceed with it.

The reason is that they want to expand passenger numbers to seven million per year by 2030 (the current figure is four million per year).

This near doubling of passenger numbers will mean a lot of extra noise for the people of Leeds. And a lot more air pollution. It will also result in a significant increase in CO2 emissions.

Mr Casci claims that he has ‘enormous sympathy’ for the environmental argument. He rightly points out that, at present, aviation accounts for two per cent of global CO2 emissions.

What he doesn’t say is that aviation emissions in the UK have more than doubled since 1990, while emissions for the economy as a whole have fallen by around 40 per cent. If the growth in air travel is not checked then this proportion could double again by 2050, even if aeroplanes become substantially more efficient.

In 2019, many parts of Yorkshire were under several feet of flood water. This was the result of one degree of global heating.

Unless we all cut CO2 emissions the world could be four degrees hotter by the end of this century. We owe it to our grandchildren to make those cuts. Starting now.