Climate Change to Be a Key Issue at Stansted Inquiry

PROTESTERS against expanding the use of Stansted airport will use climate change as a central plank of their case at a public inquiry.

They have enlisted Aqqaluk Lynge, president of the Inuit Circumpolar Council and a former government minister in Greenland, to argue against plans to increase the number of passengers using the airport from 25 million to 35 million a year.

Mr Lynge will tell the inquiry that global warming, caused in part by aircraft emissions, has already damaged the polar environment and that the damage will become worse if the expansion goes ahead.

Mr Lynge’s appearance shows that climate change will be considered for the first time in an airportplanning inquiry alongside the normal local concerns of economic benefits, noise and surface access.

As a result, officials at BAA, the owner of Stansted, have said the inquiry will run for six months, double the time originally expected.

The inquiry is not looking at a planned second runway at the air- port, but an immediate expansion that would increase the number of passengers using existing facilities.

BAA is seeking permission to raise the number of flights by 80,000 to 264,000 a year.

Mr Lynge will tell the inquiry: “You may say that the expansion of London Stansted airport will play only a small part in increasing climate change, but everyone can say that about almost everything they do. It is an excuse for doing nothing.

“The result of that attitude would be catastrophic. The serious consequences affecting my people today will affect your people tomorrow.

“Planes are sometimes necessary.

I could not have come here without travelling by plane. But I came here for an important purpose. Most flights from London Stansted airport are not for an important purpose.” A spokesman for BAA agreed that the Government’s aviation policy, set out in a White Paper four years ago, said environmental issues must be taken into account in airport expansion decisions.

He said: “We have seen environmental issues come to the fore and the UK become more socially aware of their impact, but that does not mean that the policy was created without environmental issues in mind.” The inquiry will also hear from the National Trust, which will claim that one of England’s oldest forests is at serious risk from the expansion of cheap air travel.

It will argue that the 1,000-acre Hatfield Forest, on the edge of the airport will be critically affected by pollution.

The trust says nitrogen generated by air pollution is already at twice the level at which it contributes to environmental damage including tree death.

Described as the Stonehenge of the tree world, Hatfield Forest has nearly 2,000 trees that are more than 600 years old. Keith Turner, the trust’s area manager, said: “The real concern of the trust is that expansion of the airport could degrade the aesthetic, historic, scientific and social values beyond critical points.”

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