Climate Change to Be Key Issue at Stansted Probe

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 airport planning 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 airport, 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." BAA said although complaints about noise from the airport have risen, a majority of them are made by just a handful of people.

The figures show that in the past year 13,956 complaints have been recorded, 9,100 of which were made by just 14 people an average of 650 each.

The inquiry, which is due to start tomorrow, 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..

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