We must stop polluting the sky

TWO stories illustrate the rot at the heart of our Government’s environmental credentials (Watchdog lays down the law to business: ‘Go green or suffer’ and MSP backing for air tax, News, April 2). On one hand we have Sepa heralding ever-more stringent environmental regulations for polluters on the ground. On the other, we have the proposed air passenger duty (APD) cut: the Scottish Government’s wrong-headed policy to promote a health and environmental disaster by the most polluting form of transport. A tax cut for the wealthy that even the SNP Finance Committee chair has acknowledged relies on very little independent evidence to support it.

Cutting, then abolishing, APD will blast a £300 million hole in our public finances. Utter folly in a time of austerity, it will regressively hurl cash at the wealthiest minority in society who fly while sending our national CO2 targets soaring.

The indecently undertaxed aviation industry can’t wait to get its hands on the APD reduction prize that it has spent years lobbying for. This industry is subject to no environmental sanction, and is set to render hundreds of thousands of homes uninhabitable, and destroy beautiful tranquil places – drowning them in a sea of jet plane noise as they change long-established patterns of flightpath use across our country.

Sweeping changes to flight paths are happening now around Edinburgh and will soon affect every commercial airport in Scotland – despite the vast majority of respondents to Edinburgh Airport’s 2016 consultation saying an emphatic no to further flight-path change. Already people are reporting health effects including sleep deprivation, stress, anxiety and depression from the endless din of jet planes roaring over their homes. A scandal and a national disgrace. Helena Paul Edinburgh Airport Watch