The Labour government just announced a £1.1bn investment in a Stansted Airport expansion over the next five years, ultimately showing how little it cares about the planet and climate crisis:
We are pleased to today release details of a £1.1bn investment programme in @STN_Airport over the next five years ✈️
Announced as part of the Government’s International Investment Summit, our investment will help us attract even more routes to destinations around the world and… pic.twitter.com/HuYgpScFvr
— London Stansted Airport (@STN_Airport) October 14, 2024
Stansted airport expansion: climate crisis inbound
Of course, the government’s decision flies (almost quite literally) in the face of the climate crisis.
This includes the advice of its very own independent body the Climate Change Committee. Crucially, it had argued that government’s shouldn’t approve any airport expansions as this would jeopardise its climate commitments.
Naturally then, first the Labour Party gave the greenlight to the London City Airport expansion in August. It alone will mean the UK will pump out a further 230,000 tonnes of carbon-equivalent emissions a year, up to 2050.
Evidently, it wasn’t content with spewing just these extra hundreds of thousands of planet-wrecking emissions into the atmosphere. Now, it wants to ramp this up with Stansted’s expansion too:
First London City Airport, now Stansted. Heathrow and Gatwick next?
We have climate deniers at the heart of our Government.
The climate change committee has said the industry cannot grow without undermining our emissions goals, and has urged ministers to stop expansion. https://t.co/9bFPwaGqOF
— Nate Higgins (@natehiggins) October 14, 2024
The government was bandying around its shiny new investment, jobs, and the economic contributions it’ll purportedly make for the UK. By contrast, it was a little quiet about the greenhouse gases it would produce:
Tell us about the carbon footprint of this project.
— austenspace (@austensp) October 14, 2024
Previously, the New Economics Foundation had estimated that the Stansted airport expansion plans could add another 281,000 tonnes of emissions a year. All that’s ON TOP of the staggering emissions London’s airports are pumping out already.
Labour didn’t get the memo that in 2019, London’s six airports generated the same amount of air pollution as 3.23m cars then? Obviously, it’s more likely it did, it’s just that it doesn’t care.
Solar farms and the stuff of climate offset fiction
Don’t worry though, Labour and Gatwick have a sleek solution to all that pollution. That is, stick a solar farm over the problem:
Laughable greenwashing from govt and Stansted too as they point out the airport will be building a solar farm to provide green electricity for airport buildings. Oh that makes up for all the jet fuel burned, does it?!
— Helena Horton (@horton_official) October 14, 2024
Labour’s proudly showing off *Stansted airport’s expansion* with a *solar farm* to feed the terminal’s increasing electricity use and *EV charging stations*. Beautifully sums up this government’s approach to afterthought sustainability. Pure cli-fi https://t.co/zS5XZvH6Ac
— Charlie Hertzog Young (@utopianrealism) October 14, 2024
That’s some good ol’ greenwashing guff right there. Though, one person on X felt the new government might be missing a trick:
Quick add some CCS to complete the task
— peter williams (@p17ete) October 14, 2024
Naturally, it all happened just as we found out that trees and land absorbed almost zero carbon dioxide last year. Needless to say, the sudden collapse in carbon sinks was not factored into climate crisis modelling:
Your ‘moment of doom’ for Oct. 14, 2024 ~ Legacy.
“The kind of rapid land sink collapse seen in 2023 has not been factored into most climate models. If it continues, it raises the prospect of rapid global heating beyond what those models have predicted.”https://t.co/391gOz1e2x
— Prof. Eliot Jacobson (@EliotJacobson) October 14, 2024
I’ve been telling you they don’t include the earth’s response to warming, which is to emit gas into climate models because it can’t be factored in.
Why? We can’t know what the Earth will do as it warms. It’s the first time any civilization has made the world go extinct. https://t.co/J6BjriAZdB
— Jessica ❤️ (@jessicawins) October 14, 2024
Who’s going to break it to the airline companies that their favourite carbon offsetting scam just isn’t gonna fly – because the forests aren’t taking it anymore? Not that it ever did anyway, given countless studies and court rulings junking offset credit schemes.
Labour hasn’t stuck the landing on its climate pledges
If the new expansion is anything, it’s a sure-fire way to accelerate climate chaos:
Airport expansion means accelerating climate breakdown. The UK government’s announcement of an extension of #Stansted is yet another assault on human and planetary wellbeing.
— George Monbiot (@GeorgeMonbiot) October 14, 2024
And while air travel will be soaring, the government will expect the public to pick up the slack on cutting emissions:
And yet today, @UKLabour is proudly announcing £1Bn funding for expansion of Stanstead Airport.
The climate impacts of further expansion in aviation will mean even greater emissions cuts in every other sector.@Ed_Miliband@LouHaighCan you make your policies make sense!
— Art 💚 (@artgelling) October 14, 2024
I’m old enough to remember Haigh announcing investment for cycling a day after the last airport expansion announcement. That would be: Labour’s number one plan to make the rest of us tackle the climate crisis, while CEOs fly business class each week, everyone else must get on their bikes.
But it’s what the electorate wanted, right? Certain, eventual death:
It is what voters wanted.
Only the Lib Dems and Greens promised to curtail air travel on thier manifestos and most voters rejected them.
— Lawrence Locke (@LawrenceLocke6) October 14, 2024
Mind ahead, jet-setting Starmer is taking U-turns to new heights. First, the party jettisoned its £28 green investment pledge. Then, it started turbo-boosting the industry destroying the planet.
Of course, the Stansted airport expansion is Labour’s climate crisis plan in a nutshell. It will still fuck the Earth, just now with extra greenwashing. Oh and don’t forget the jobs, the extra jobs always make ruining the only known habitable planet in this solar system totally worth it.
The only ‘change’ Starmer is giving us is more of the climate destruction kind. But as long as his rich pals are happy, eh?
Because, absolutely nothing to see here… just the fact that multiple new Labour MPs have taken funding from a lobbying firm which shills for the International Airlines Group (IAG). Forget getting in bed with big business, the new Labour government has well and truly joined the ‘Mile High Club’ when it comes to the corporate capitalists screwing the planet.
Feature image via Youtube- 10 Downing Street/ Casey Planespotting/ the Canary
