thames estuary

Boris’s idea will never fly

Submitted by Joe on Fri, 01/20/2012 - 13:40
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Wednesdays announcement that the government will consider building a new airport in the Thames Estuary, dubbed 'Boris Island' sparked a long day of media hysteria.

Boris Johnson's voice echoed out over our TVs, Radios and newspapers the next day and Plane Stupid came under pressure to get a representative to appear on Sky News and Newsnight in response. 

We are totally baffled by it all. 'Boris Island' airport is to be built on an artificial island and would result in 150 million more passengers a year which is serious bad news for the climate. We can't allow airport expansion on this scale and meet our climate change reduction targets at the same time – the two government policies are mutually incompatible and cannot both succeed.

The other little problem is the fact that the Thames Estuary is basically a bird sanctuary. Birds and planes don't match – simple as that.

Here are some other useful facts that need to be included in the debate:

  • The UK fly on average twice as much than any other country in the world already.
  • The most popular destination out of Heathrow is Paris and 3rd is Manchester. If we reduced these unnecessary flights there would be plenty of capacity at Heathrow Airport  
  • Aviation is the fasting growing source of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • If aviation grows at its projected annual rates then aviation will take up 100% or more of our national carbon budget some time between 2030 and 2050.
  • Between Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, London City and Luton; London already has 6 runways and 10 terminals.

Only Boris could come up with an idea as daft as this, building an airport in a tidal estuary when we are facing a future of rising sea levels due in part to emissions from aviation.

For now we will just be keeping a close eye on it but if given the go ahead the Thames Estuary Airport could represent an activists dream. Building an airport on an artificial island is such an enormous logistical project that it would be child's play to disrupt it!

Boris's nonsense island airport

Submitted by Joe on Tue, 11/22/2011 - 11:42
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We don't need any more airports! In truth, more airport expansion would be a disaster. We cannot expand our airports and reach our climate change reduction targets at the same time – this is a fact that we have been shouting off roofs, on runways etc for years. But Boris Johnson just doesn't seem to get it.

On Monday 22nd November, Boris issued a report which said building a new airport in the Thames Estuary, 'dubbed Boris Island', would allow Britain to tap into billions of pounds of foreign investment and would provide more airport capacity. However campaigners are challenging these statistics. AirportWatch, the umbrella organisation representing aviation campaigning groups, has produced figures which show that London already has a greater number of flights to the world’s main business destinations than any of its European rivals. In total, London’s airports have over 1000 departure flights each week to the key business destinations compared with Paris’s 499, Frankfurt’s 443, and Amsterdam’s 282. The full figures are published HERE.

What is even more concerning is that Boris has refused to even acknowledge the threat of climate change. The Heathrow 3rd runway plans were partly grounded because of climate change arguments so when Boris doesn't even mention climate change you have to start worrying. The reality remains that if the aviation industry were to keep to their promises to get its emissions down to 2000 levels, they will not need any extra runways at all as they would have to cut flying by 35%.

In terms of location there is also the small issue of the Liquefied Natural Gas facility which lies in the way. The Isle of Grain, where Boris wants to build his silly airport, is home to one of the world’s largest liquefied natural gas terminals, which sees a fifth of the UK’s gas supply offloaded by container ships and stored there. Lethal liquid gas for the area comes via the container port at the Isle of Grain which surely rules out these bizarre airport plans in the first place.

Boris Island is now right up there on our radar and Plane Stupid will be keeping an eye out for any new developments to the story. Kent County Council and Medway Council, along with the RSPB, will all fight the scheme. You can add Plane Stupid to that list too.