Have you had a yellow envelope?

Letter, Heathrow Villager, 8 February 2020

Many residents have had a yellow envelope fall through your door, claiming to have the answers on Heathrow and climate change. The letter was from Heathrow front group Back Heathrow. They are right that we must reduce global warming. The Paris Climate Accord determined that we must ensure that average temperature does not exceed 1.5C above pre-industrial levels. The UK government legislated in 2019 to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.

Back Heathrow’s say that electric planes are the answer, but evidence shows they are many decades away, at the very earliest. The Government’ s own Committee for Climate Change has said “there are likely to be no commercially available zero-carbon planes by 2050, particularly for long-haul flights”, and this “will require breakthroughs in battery energy density to be- come a commercially viable proposition.”

Back Heathrow say that offsetting is the an- swer but, when passing net-zero legislation, the Government was clear that “net-zero emissions must be reached across the whole economy (including emissions from international aviation and shipping) and that the aim is to achieve the target entirely through action in the UK without re- course to international credits (or ‘offsets’).”

Back Heathrow and Heathrow say that they will provide 6 1/2 hours night-time respite, but

that is “from the gate” and “to the gate”. Taking into account time to the runway, take off and to be over West London or the Thames Valley and vice- versa for landing, that equates to only 5 1/2 hours respite each night. But the World Health Organisation recommends that adults get 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night. And what about children who need more?

Back Heathrow say expansion will create “180,000” jobs. Let’s look at the record. To gain approval to build Terminal 5, Heathrow promised 6,000 new jobs however since that time the num- ber employed at Heathrow has reduced from around 79,000 to 76,000, so instead of their prom- ised increase of 6,000 a reduction of 3,000!

Heathrow is 90% owned by Chinese, Singaporean, Qatari, Spanish and Canadians who last year received £800m in dividends and yet paid only £24m in corporation tax to the UK govern- ment in total over the previous 10 years. This is not about business and benefit for Britain, but about increased profit and dividends for Heathrow’ s foreign shareholders.

Heathrow clearly have huge additional divi- dends to gain from airport expansion, whilst those around suffer in many ways, so in light of all their misinformation how can we believe what they say?

Robert Barnstone
Stop Heathrow Expansion