Response to Sir Howard Davies speech on Airport Capacity

Dear Sir Howard,

Having read your speech today, firstly let me congratulate you on the in depth analysis that you have carried out and the range of view points that you have considered.

My observation on your comments (in italics) follow:

1. “We are grateful to all those who have responded and helped us in our work. Of course in some cases, at airports or in airlines, for example, one may argue that it is their job to do so. But many others, in local action groups or environmental organisations, have devoted much personal time to preparing well-considered responses to the many questions we have posed.”

   
   

   
   

   
   

   
   

After having devoted considerable time making submissions to this commission, its predecessor the sustainable aviation consultation and other parliamentary committees it is gratifying to see your acknowledgement of the efforts that concerned citizens have gone to.

I trust that with your comment you also appreciate that the dice is hugely loaded towards the large aviation corporations. From a purely logistical perspective, it is far easier for them to continue submitting to consultations such as this than it is for members of the public who have to balance the time for research and preparation with the normal day to day business of work and family life. It is also emotionally draining repeatedly explaining the severity and consequences of climate change.

But the loading of the dice is done in ways that are far more subtle and subversive towards supporting the goals of the industry. Many people are unable to comment on the climate change and environmental limitations that we inevitably face for fear of losing their job. No one in the aviation industry, oil industry, motor industry, travel industry and many others would have the courage to speak loudly against the aviation industry. To do so, would almost certainly invite dismissal.

Indeed even in education which should be the bastion of progressive thought, I have found myself in trouble with my organisation for stating the obvious in debates such as this.

The final loading of the dice against environmentalists is what they have to say is what nobody wants to hear. Government's are not elected on the basis of the closing down airports and tackling climate change, but ensuring that somehow the status quo of economic growth can be preserved despite this being impossible. For this, they have the full backing of the press. So on these matters, governments listen to industry and then conjure up large and plausible words to make it sound like they are taking climate change seriously and listening to environmentalists. I would suggest that despite your efforts, you will have taken more soundings from industry than from climate change scientists. It is hugely concerning that your speech makes no mention of the last IPCC report despite it only being published one week ago. It is equally concerning when in this country we have world leading expert centres such as the Tyndal Centre that you have not solicited information from. Prior to your next report, I would challenge your organisation to take soundings on this matter from Prof Kevin Anderson who has done considerable research on the impacts of aviation on climate change.

I trust also that you appreciate that many thinking people are now terrified about the emerging disaster of climate change, but feel powerless to act. Many of these concerned people would neither know that this commission is taking place nor feel adequately qualified to make a worthwhile submission – yet their fear of the future remains justified. This places a special onus on your commission to ensure environmental considerations are given their full weight, and not simply moved to one-side by the overwhelming response load that the aviation industry is able to muster.

2. “Official and industry forecasts of demand for air travel have been systematically over-optimistic. Successive Department of Transport forecasts have recently been reduced, since the financial crisis and associated recession. That is partly a function of lower GDP growth, which is a strong driver of demand, but also a result of higher oil prices, which have increased the cost of flying aeroplanes.”

In your demand forecasting paper you never acknowledged the interconnectivity of the different aspects of our economy. The financial crisis of 2008 had its roots in the rapidly increasing oil prices that burst the bubble of speculation that drives the economy. Since that date the global economy has remained on life support through a combination of quantitative easing, exceptionally low interest rates and inflation to transfer wealth from savers to borrowers. These solutions are not sustainable. Even these exceptional efforts have hardly boosted economic growth and compared with times past the recovery is moribund. The biggest message of the 2008 crisis is that the economic system we take for granted is fundamentally flawed and the same drivers that caused the crisis haunt us still today. This persistent overhead of uncertainty is leading the US economy to the unprecedented point of a default on their bonds. As an ex-financier, I am sure that I do not need to impress on you the severity of this with its potential to blow out the water demand forecasts and availability of capital for investment.

3. “While only 6% of UK carbon emissions today are associated with air travel, that proportion could rise sharply as other sectors reduce their emissions. If we allowed unlimited growth in air traffic, that would impose high costs on the rest of the economy if the overall target is to be met, for example, pushing up domestic heating bills as the energy sector has to decarbonise more quickly.”

This is an interesting choice of words. 6% is a big slice of the pie, and as you point out it is set to increase.

More significantly the government's plans to decarbonise the economy are not going well. I refer you to the Government's document, The Carbon Plan: Delivering our low carbon future. It is ironic that with respect to aviation it boldly states in section 35 that, “Emissions from aviation will be capped by being part of the EU Emissions Trading System (EU ETS) from 2012, ensuring that any increases in aviation emissions are offset by reductions elsewhere in the EU economy, or internationally.” As you are aware this will no longer be the case, but more importantly it sets the tone for repeated failures in this paper. It again boldly claims, “New low carbon power stations – a mix of carbon capture and storage, renewables and nuclear power – will be built in the 2020s.” Again, none of this is viable. After the Fukishima disaster has irradiated the entire Pacific, nuclear power is looking less and less of an option. None of the plausible words about carbon capture and storage have been able to overcome the thermodynamic limitations inherent with its operation and today we have exactly zero carbon capture and storage projects operational in the world. Not only is the aviation industry struggling to cuts its CO2 emissions, but so is every other industry. As a result global CO2 emissions are increasing super exponentially.

I have pointed out in past submissions the danger of this to social stability. The poorest in society will be priced out of staple energy and food due to peak oil and climate change. The proposal of the aviation industry is that they should be able to price this weakened majority from access to further resources so that the richest minority can continue flying. This is the only outcome from the carbon trading proposals that the industry is proposing, it is fundamentally an act of aggression against society’s weakest.

4. “But none of the submissions made to us have suggested that there are transformational gains to be had. It is true that larger aircraft, like the Airbus A380, could deliver some additional capacity in terms of passenger numbers. New aircraft in each market segment are likely to be a little larger than their predecessors (as well as being quieter and more fuel-efficient). But airline fleets change slowly and the direction for travel is not all one way (for example, some new Boeing 787s may replace larger 747s)”

This seems to be a misinterpretation of the competing strategies of the aviation industry. The A380 was built to enhance the existing the hub and spoke model of aviation by allowing higher density operation on the main routes. By contrast the initial market of the B787 was to support desire of airlines to move to a point-to-point business model. It should be noted that both of these significantly increase CO2 emissions. The A380 increases emissions by simple virtue of its size and the increased number of people that it allows in the aviation transport network, many of whom will be using connecting flights. The B787 however is potentially far worse. Its initial design was laid down in 2003/4 at a time of still relatively low oil prices. Boeing initially considered a higher speed subsonic plane but were persuaded by their customers to build an economical long haul plane suitable for point to point operations. Sustaining this mode of operation inherently requires a much bigger total fuel burn and a substantial increase in aviation business to support it. It was also a solution that the aviation industry saw to overcome potential capacity restrictions at hub airports.

Thus to say that B787 will replace B747s gives a limited picture of the strategic intent of the B787 and the potentially devastating environmental impact of moving to a point to point network.

The point to point model is much more difficult for environmental movements to counter as protests are needed at a wide range of airports. It thus incumbent for your commission to recognise that the B787 strategy is also effectively a route for the aviation industry to circumvent environment protest and to take a harder line with the point to point model.

5. “The best outcome [on climate change] would clearly be a global deal on aviation.”

The aviation industry have been unable to come up with anything even approaching a global deal, and given that it has failed every time it has tried, it is naivety to believe that it will suddenly start succeeding. Turkeys don't vote for Christmas and organisations with billions of pounds invested in capital equipment don't vote for contractions that will leave these idle, especially when they have huge interest payments to meet.

6. “Growth beyond that, unless current assumptions about fuel efficiency and the use of alternative fuels prove to have been overly pessimistic, would put great pressure on the rest of the economy to achieve further carbon reductions, which could be very costly.”

As I have argued in previous submissions, assumptions about fuel efficiency and alternative fuels are already provably wrong. As planes are now almost fully optimised in terms of aerodynamics, structures and thermodynamics any further improvements will be marginal and require huge investments. For this to be recouped, huge numbers of planes need to be sold and operated negating any environmental savings.

The other thrust of the aviation industry is that they can grow their own fuel in some carbon neutral nirvana where global food shortages don't exist and plants are not needed to sequestrate carbon from our polluted atmosphere.

Tesco also tried this approach in 2005. In our correspondence with them where we sought their environmental justifications. They eventually admitted, “When we decided to make biofuels available to customers in 2005, we did so in the belief that they could help customers to reduce their carbon impacts and reduce our dependency on oil as a source for petrol. Since then it has become clear that the impacts of biofuels are more complex” before dropping their entire biofuel marketing campaign. Since then, Terry Leahy went on to warn about the dangers biofuels impose to food security and in a talk on the issue he belatedly stated “we should think things through before acting, so that we do not suffer from unintended consequences.” It is therefore incredible that the aviation industry cannot be bothered to think through the consequences of their proposals, especially when the evidence is so clear all around the world.

It is a hubris that is probably more brutal than any that has gone before. Producing biofuels requires the conscious destruction of ecological resources such as tropical rainforests which are of immense value to the planet now and in the future for absolutely no scientific justification.

7. “Our work so far suggests that doing nothing to address the capacity constraints in our current airport system would not be the right approach. Its likely effect would be to restrict passengers’ choices and it could have unintended consequences for the efficiency and resilience of UK airports, as well as possibly leading to some flights and emissions being displaced to other countries.”

You make this comment immediately after your final summary about being receptive to the constraints of climate change and your well argued points that the best way to constrain aviation emissions is to constrain development of airports. It is quite remarkable. You have seen the evidence but your final adjudication ignores it. Perhaps you might want to explain why. It is setting a bad and dangerous omen for the future.

I thank you for your final request for comments on the analysis you have set out.

Yours sincerely,

Kevin Lister, Bsc (aero eng), MBA, MSC(mathematics)

Sustainable avaition consultation and the threat to democracy

Letter to No. 10 Downing Street in response to the government decision not to proceed with the sustainable aviation consultation.


Dear Mr. Cameron,

Ref: Aviation consultation.

 

After spending considerable time preparing a submission for the Sustainable Aviation consultation on behalf of Plane Stupid and People and Planet, it is with horror and rage that I read in the press this weekend your government is not going to publish the result of its consultation because, according the FT, “the question is being handed over to an independent commission.”

  

If you decide not to publish the conclusions from your government’s year long study into the future of aviation, you are saying to the public that we should never again bother wasting our time engaging with any public consultation exercises, because when those in power do not like the result they will simply change the rules.

The aviation debate is of such importance that it must be resolved through our elected representatives, irrespective of how messy and distasteful this becomes. To delegate this to an independent commissioner says that our elected representatives are of no importance, and by inference the process of voting is a wasted effort. You should be fearful of what happens when you undermine the process of governance and democracy, especially as we enter hard times ahead and when we are already seeing the strains on our society.

Any proposition that the commission will be independent is nonsense. The commissioners will no doubt be powerful leaders of businesses, aviation and finance companies that have vested interests in expanding aviation. I am prepared to bet that no credible climate change experts or representatives from local communities that stand to be destroyed will be invited to the commission. Your commission will only be independent in as much that it will be independent of any environmental consideration.

We met with Theresa Villiers MP and the Department for Transport in July 2011 and were encouraged to make submissions to your consultation. We were assured of a fair and transparent process that would fully consider all evidence submitted. The Department for Transport presented their strategy for making aviation sustainable by controlling greenhouse gases through a combination of biofuels, carbon trading and new technological innovation. My report totally discredited all these approaches. Its “unpalatable conclusions” were:

1. The strategies of introducing new technology, biofuels and carbon trading which form the basis of the sustainable framework document will not deliver any reduction in aviation greenhouse gas emissions. This is an unacceptable position given the critical risk that humanity faces due to the unsustainable build up of greenhouse gases.
2. Aviation emissions can only be reduced by imposing a strict ceiling on plane movements or aviation fuel sales. This ceiling must then be reduced in line with the objective of reducing CO2 emissions by 80%.
3. The principle objective of the Department for Transport should be to work with other equivalent departments in other countries to implement similar policies (as point 2) and to find ways to reduce demand for transport.
4. The Department of Transport will have to show considerable courage to stand up to the advertising and lobbying campaigns that the aviation industry has already launched to subvert any movement towards recognising and taking action on climate change. The legal definition of fraud should be reviewed and test cases implemented against companies that make blatantly false environmental claims.
5. The final adjudication that the government makes must take cognisance of the impact that rising oil prices will have on both the long term viability of the aviation industry and the full risk of wider instabilities in society and in the international arena.
6. The forced reduction in aviation will fundamentally change the economic model and philosophies that our society has built on by forcing a clear acknowledgement that economic growth cannot continue indefinitely and limits have been reached. As such, this consultation must be integrated with the debate on the introduction of individual carbon rations or the imposition of a carbon tax, where the receipts are distributed directly to the population as advocated by James Hanson.
7. It will not be possible to achieve the large reductions in aviation within the debt based economic system that we operate today. However, to maintain the existing growth based system will result in large scale impoverishment of society, climate collapse and war.

I can only conclude that your decision to move to an independent commission and not publish the results of your consultation is to avoid addressing the points that I raised in my submission.

The rapidly unfolding events since preparing this report underline all the above: The rate of melting of the Arctic Ice cap far exceeds the worst scenarios of the IPCC report of 2007, with the real prospect of an ice free ocean by 2015 leading to the collapse of the climatic stability upon which we have built our fragile civilisation. Syria is enmeshed in civil war following the destruction of its economic stability after a prolonged drought wiped out 85% of its live stock and converted a wheat exporting nation to a wheat importing nation at the mercy of world food prices. World food production is in a state of collapse following extreme droughts and floods. The list goes on.

It is against this background that you and your government continue in a state of blind hubris to believe airports should be built to cater for the holiday needs of a society in 2050, which in all likelihood will have ceased to exist by that time, and you will pervert the processes of governance to ensure this happens. These policies of hell bent expansion in defiance of blatantly evident limits to growth make our democracy as illegitimate as a dictatorship hell bent on expansion through force of arms.

You need to recognise that we now live in a new age where we are systematically learning that the glories of our past are being exposed as lies in all their dirt and gore. We now know our banks operated fraudulently, that we went to war on fraudulent claims and that top athletes like Lance Armstrong cheated. They all crashed, destroying themselves and many innocent people in the process. However, the biggest lie is still being played out; it is the one that you are continuing, which is that we can make a better future by destroying what is left of our environment. Your lie like every other will crash taking many innocent victims with it. When our system of governance ignores the science and calls to reason; persecutes those that protest peacefully, you might want to wonder what the prospective victims are left with and what they should do.

Yours sincerely

Kevin Lister

Email to the commander of the Met Police (Jon Kay), thanking him for bringing his riot police to the Climate Camp. They made us feel so important.

Dear Commander Jonathan,

After listening to your interview on Radio 4’s PM, I would like to thank you for the excellent policing that I experienced at the Climate Change Camp from the men under your charge. Your policemen were truly wonderful and a true model for the type of policing that I would like to see in my street. In fact I think many areas of London and the other inner city areas elsewhere in the country would be delighted to see just a small percentage of the level of policing that you kindly provided during the week, and in particular on the day of protest.

If we had the level of policing that you provided we would never have to worry about burglaries, petty vandalism or anything else. I can only imagine the pleasing scenario, of my daughter going to the local shops and every time being escorted by at least three police officers fully equipped in riot gear. She would feel so safe. However, I have to say that strangely when your excellent chaps provided me with the same sort of protection on Sunday, I did not feel quite so safe. I work on the basis of three riot equipped police to escort my daughter to the shops, because that is about the ratio of riot police that seem to be surrounding me and the other climate change protesters.

I am delighted in the interview on Radio 4s PM that you explained that your officers had come under sustained missile attack. I now understand why your delightful men surrounded me. It was silly of me to miss the missiles that were obviously being thrown from the empty fields behind me and I must have missed the sound of the missiles landing on their helmets. I appreciate that this is an easy mistake that anyone can make in the heat of the moment.

It must have been one of these missiles that caused about nine of your officers to arrest a climate change protester just in font of me. I am so sorry if I misinterpreted your proportionate policing, because it did seem a bit brutal to me. Again we all make mistakes and I understand that in the heat of the moment your officers were scared and under the impression that we were going to attack them. That is me, an 86-year-old pensioner that I was helping, and two other protesters. If you do the maths you will realise that this is four.

When I asked the sergeant in charge what he was doing, he shouted in a somewhat threatening way for us to move back and one of his men shoved me with a riot shield. I asked if he was perhaps over reacting a bit. He said he was surrounded. I explained that there were four of us and about nine of his officers. We could try and surround him if he wanted, but it would be difficult. Fortunately, he was able to count and he seemed then to calm down. He also seemed to calm down even more when I took his photograph for my holiday snaps, which follows below. Perhaps he is just camera shy.



A few minutes later, another chap standing next to me got truncheoned over his head by one of your officers. Your officer was a strange sort of chap. He seemed rather aggressive, almost as if he enjoyed hitting things, perhaps that is one of the things that qualifies him for the job. The strangest thing of all is that he did not have number on his lapel, or on his helmet and he had a balaclava pulled right up to the bridge of his nose. So, as you can appreciate it is a bit difficult for me to describe him to you. All I can say is that he was standing next to another officer with the number 3678. Perhaps it is just a coincidence, that one of the most aggressive officers on your line had no number, or maybe I am drawing silly conclusions again. It did go through my mind that if I went into a petrol station like this I would not be served, it also stuck me as being a little strange when your web site you said “Some demonstrators were seen to cover their face.” Again, I may be have got this wrong, but it seemed to me that most of the covered faces were police faces.

I would also like to thank you for providing so much protection for the BAA offices. I realise that these offices were empty, like most offices are on a Sunday afternoon and that the protest was largely a token effort. But as you said in your interview, “You have got to believe a crime would be committed.” I would have been appalled if the BAA offices were blown up and I am quite sure that the risk of a protester carrying out a suicide attack on these empty offices would have been extremely high. After all, if you wanted to carry out a suicide attack, you would definitely choose the empty BAA offices rather than Terminal 1, where someone might get hurt.

You were also right to assume that protestors were armed and dangerous. Because you had stopped and searched just about everybody at the camp at least once, and found next to nothing, it was obvious that all the weapons were cunningly hidden and that your officers were in mortal danger. Also, you would have had no idea what the plans were because the protestors were so good at hiding from all the cameras that you had around the site, and they probably said very little to the undercover police who I am sure you must have had in the camp planning meetings. Certainly, given the rest of the policing I would be amazed if you did not have any undercover officers infiltrating the camp.

I am also delighted that you have allowed your organisation to be turned into a private army for BAA. They do after all have the right to make whatever profit they can manage irrespective of the environmental damage, and clearly a bunch of protestors who have noticed this need to be treated as dangerous terrorists. It does however seem a bit strange to me that a foreign owned company gets more protection from the police in this country than do the tax paying residents of this country. But, that is probably me being a cynical fool.


Perhaps you are just practicing for the future. The climate will get hotter in the coming years, the climate change protests will grow, the confrontations with short-term profit focused companies and the concerned population will intensify. Your position of out right and blatant support for those companies committing environment degradation will become morally untenable. To hear you acting as an apologist on the radio for your blatant over policing and the evident abuse of powers, with no media challenge, is the most damming threat to our democratic institutions and free speech that I have ever experienced, especially when virtaully all other means of democratic protest on the governements proposals have been removed and their current policies are so ill founded.

Yours Kevin Lister