"UK Airport Debate: Do we need more runways? NO/ The argument over airport development is fierce"

Saturday, June 21, 2003

Opinion
Do we need more runways? NO/ The argument over airport development is
fierce
By Zac Goldsmith
United Kingdom - The Daily Telegraph


The Government predicts a threefold increase in the number of passengers
using air transport by 2030, and intends to provide for it. According to
the London-based campaigning organisation Airport Watch, this would
entail building a new airport the size of Stansted every year for the
next 25 years.

Development on such a scale would further erode the diminishing green
belt to provide for new airports within easy access of cities. Houses
would be demolished so that new runways could be built and existing ones
extended. Valuable wildlife habitats and heritage sites would vanish
forever.

But, so the logic goes, this is the price we must pay if we want
"sustained" economic growth. However, the logic is flawed. For while the
aviation industry will undoubtedly grow, reaping vast profits, the real
costs will be borne by society as a whole. It will be our taxes that
provide for the huge increase in aviation-related health care costs -
for respiratory problems, cardiac diseases and nervous disorders - which
the Aviation Environment Federation predicts will triple from a current
pounds 1.3 billion to pounds 3.9 billion a year by 2030.

Noise pollution will rise. Already, one in eight of the population is
affected, at an estimated cost to the economy of more than pounds 300
million a year. The chance of accidents will increase. With traffic
predicted to grow four times faster in the air than on the road, huge
demands will be placed on an already stretched air-traffic-control
system. More alarming are the implications of all this for our climate.
It is predicted that by 2050 aviation will be responsible for a third of
Britain's energy consumption and 15 per cent of worldwide greenhouse gas
emissions - making a mockery of the Government's own emissions targets.

Nonetheless, the Government has decided that all these costs are
necessary to create jobs. But evidence shows that building new airports
has no effect on the level of employment. The Berkeley Hanover study
(2000) into the impact of future aviation growth in the UK, commissioned
by Friends of the Earth, clearly shows that a new transport
infrastructure doesn't create jobs; it redistributes them.

However, the real problem with the Government's argument is that it is
based on a myth. The "predicted" demand is artificial. Certainly, the
abundance of pounds 2 flights to Barcelona, Bruges and Biarritz has made
a weekend on the Continent more affordable. But these prices are only
possible because the costs of flying are kept artificially low. Aviation
fuel is not taxed; there is no VAT on air tickets, no VAT on the
purchase of planes and servicing; landing fees are held down to about
half the actual market level by the CAA regulatory regime. There is no
air-traffic congestion charge; no charge on environmental air pollution
such as carbon dioxide emissions; no charge levied on noise pollution;
in fact, section 76 of the Civil Aviation Act 1982 actually offers
protection against legal action for noise nuisance.

As Peter Jay, former economics editor of the Financial Times and the
BBC, said in a letter to the FT last year: "So long as use of London's
airports costs the traveller next to nothing, demand curves doubling
every 20 years (or indeed every 10) can be drawn ad infinitum to
bamboozle ministers and the public into supposing quite falsely that
extra capacity in needed."

Or as John Humphrys wrote in The Sunday Times the year before: "Fill
your small car with petrol to drive to your granny's and most of the
bill for it goes in fuel duties. . . . Fill a vast jumbo with fuel to
fly businessmen across the Atlantic and the airline pays not a penny in
tax."

So what should be done? The Government needs to stop subsidising the
aviation industry and concentrate on more efficient forms of travel
(fast-link rail services, for example, could replace short-haul
flights). Rather than predicting and providing for the fat cats of one
industry, the Government needs to predict and prevent a disaster that
will affect us all.

Zac Goldsmith is editor of `The Ecologist'.


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