MEP Warns Festival-Goers Of Airlines’ Growing Contribution To Climate Change
28 July 2006 - Revellers at this year’s ‘WOMAD’ festival in Reading are being warned of the aviation industry’s growing contribution to climate change.
Local Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas will tell the festival’s ‘One World’ stage that the projected growth in air travel is the fastest growing contributor to devastating climate change – and that the industry’s wings must be clipped to avert disaster.
“Aviation is growing fast – and so is its greenhouse gas emissions,” the Euro-MP, a member of the European Parliament’s influential Environment Committee and the parliament’s ‘rapporteur’ on climate change and aviation, will say.
“The industry enjoys more than £9bn worth of tax breaks and hidden subsidies from the UK taxpayer every year, and the Government has promised to meet its demands to concrete over the countryside in a rush to build enough new runways to satisfy their growing business.
“Meanwhile, other sectors are, rightly, being forced to address greenhouse gas emissions – can this be fair? Are cheap and casual flights really worth sacrificing the planet and civilisation as we know it for? The answer is obvious – and if the Government is either unprepared or incapable of taking action to limit the airlines’ growing emissions, then we must join together as citizens and keep up the pressure on them to change their policy.”
Dr Lucas, who earlier this month had proposals to set up an emissions trading scheme for EU airlines overwhelmingly adopted by the European Parliament, will speak at the festival as the guest of local climate change group Reading Rising Tide.
Other speakers include Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament chair Kate Hudson and musician and campaigner Billy Bragg. The stage will also host a Chinese martial arts demonstration, ‘parasol story tellers’ – and a workshop on ‘international life skills’.
