23 May 2006 - The owner of Gatwick Airport has refused permission for a Euro-MP examining the aviation industry’s impact on climate change from taking photographs in a public area of the airport.

Staff at BAA told Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas and local environmental activists they would be prevented from taking photos – even in public areas – to illustrate the issue of air travel’s growing impact on climate change.

Dr Lucas, who has drafted a report being examined by MEPs into how to reduce the impact of flying on climate change, said: “Aviation is the fastest growing contributor to climate change – in fact, researchers have shown it will account for all permissible greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 if it is allowed to grow unchecked.

“I wanted to illustrate this with a series of photographs depicting the level of damaging emissions produced during each flight – and I am amazed and appalled at BAA’s head-in-the-sand attitude, especially at a time when the government and the EU are trying to raise public awareness about how to reduce CO2 emissions.

“The EU is currently considering Green Party proposals to introduce a range of measures to reduce the sector’s emissions – by ending tax breaks and hidden subsidies and making the industry meet the true costs of its social and environmental impact.”

Dr Lucas had originally sought permission to take photographs of a mock passenger carrying 85 kilo bags of sugar – equivalent in weight to the carbon released per passenger on the average air journey from Gatwick, according to a recent report ‘Gatwick – Climate Change Culprit’, produced by the Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign (GACC).

GACC calculate that on average each passenger departing from Gatwick adds 85 kg of carbon to the atmosphere where it remains for up to 100 years.

GACC chairman Brendon Sewill, said: “It is ironic that BAA says that the climate change impact of aviation is being dealt with through the EU emissions trading scheme.

“Over the past five years BAA has led the airlines in their support of a policy of getting aviation into the EU emissions trading scheme – a policy which would allow the airlines to effectively carry on with business as usual.

“As Mike Clasper, Chief Executive of BAA, has himself admitted, ‘In future [with emissions trading], the climate will not be a restraint on growth or a limit on the expansion of aviation or of airports’.”

Dr Lucas, in her role as rapporteur of the EU Parliament Environment Committee, has infuriated the aviation industry by recognising this, and proposing parameters that reflect the real climate change damage caused by air travel.

“BAA and the airlines dare not face up to the fact that we will have to fly less if we are to prevent devastating climate change,” said Dr Lucas.

“85 bags of sugar, or 85 kg of carbon, may sound small but with 16.5 million passengers departing from Gatwick that means 1,400 million kg of carbon polluting the sky each year.”

Dr Lucas’s report will be voted on by the European Parliament in July.

 
ENDS

Gatwick Area Conservation Campaign