Plane Stupid, the climate action group, staged a protest at Stansted on 8 December. Platform invited one of the protestors who was there on the day - anti-aviation activist, Katrina Forrester - to guest blog for us.
On Monday 8th December, 50 Plane Stupid activists took direct action from the streets to the runways.
In the midst of a planetary state of emergency, government inaction on climate change is beyond farcical. With the talks at Poznan last week a dismal failure, the necessary international action is a long way off. At home, our democracy continues to fail us: 70 per cent of people oppose the proposed third runway at Heathrow and still the government refuses to back down.
Direct action has become the only way to bring climate change to the forefront of political debate.
The climate science has spoken: we all now know – whether or not we choose to acknowledge it – that catastrophic climate change is underway. We also now know that we are going to have to make significant changes to the way we live if we are to confront the true nature of the climate threat. It’s not just about polar bears anymore: it’s not even just about runways. When our supposed representatives stop representing is, it’s time to stand up, be counted and say ‘not in my name’. It falls to us – the public – to highlight the changes we need to make in our everyday lives, and to take responsibility for our actions, our planet and our future.
Sense of urgency
The Stansted protest was motivated by this sense of urgency. The latest science tells us that we have no time to delay. We knew that our actions would disrupt and upset. The decision to act was not taken lightly. But we had thought through the consequences and we stood firm. As we erected our vulnerable fortress and chained ourselves together, we had already decided that some things are worth fighting for – and we hoped many people would agree.
Aviation is the fastest growing cause of climate change. If we are to meet our 80 per cent carbon reduction targets by 2050 we need to scrap expansion plans immediately.
But the message we wanted to send from that runway was not only a message about aviation. Stopping airport expansion and ending short-haul flights is just one part of what we will need to do to combat climate change.
Many of us belong to the “Iraq generation” – the generation that saw millions take to the streets to protest against the war, in vain. But we are not only the Iraq generation; we are also the ‘last generation’: the last generation who have any hope of stopping the climate crisis. How we act now is vital to our future.
Rallying cry
The politics of protest is fast becoming the only means through which we can actively shape the society we want to see. A vote every four years does not constitute political participation. At a time when society needs to change at an alarming rate, it certainly isn’t enough to hold the government determining those changes to account. We all need to start influencing the decisions of government. But more important that this, we need to take action ourselves.
We’re not telling people never to fly, never to drive, never to switch on the lights. We’re saying that we all need to start making difficult choices, thinking about when it’s responsible, when it’s necessary, to do these things. Last week’s action shows that there is a growing social movement, with people from different walks of life willing to take these choices.
'Please DO something' was the message emblazoned on our backs. That rallying cry was not directed at government decision-making in Poznan, in Brussels, in Westminster – it was directed at each and every one of us. We need, as autonomous individuals who live in a shared community, to take this struggle back: to our homes, to our ballot boxes, to our campaigns, to our universities, to our workplaces, to our streets – to our runways. It’s not too late, but soon, it might well be.
What next for Plane Stupid? When the bulldozers come to Heathrow, to Stansted, we’ll be there. We hope you will be too.
Share your views by selecting the 'Comment' button below or by posting in our forums by clicking here. Remember you need to be registered with the site in order to do this.
Useful links
Home page picture credit: aka Kath.
Comments (6)
Submitted by gc4247 on Wednesday 17 December 2008 - 15:10.
I fully understand the concerns with regards to the expansion and appreciate that so many people feel strongly with regards to the climate change on the planet.
However, in this ever changing world that we live in we must look how we are expanding and rather than trying to stop progression, look at other ways we can counteract the effects we are having on our planet.
There are so many things about our society we can change to improve the damage we regular cause to our planet that won’t actually affect anyone!
A few examples:
- How many times do you drive through a town at night and see office blocks with many lights still on inside? There seriously can’t be enough people working to warrant that kind of energy use?
- Or on the high street shops and warehouses in industrial parks; the companies that have their massive signs left on all night long? Why, what is the needs for this? Not only would it save the energy to turn it off, what about the cost saving? Let’s imagine that it cost 20p per night to keep that sign on, ok that’s only £73 a year! What’s £73 per year?! It’s a lot of you consider some companies have hundreds of stores across the UK alone. But then consider all of the retails outlets, that would be millions if not billions of pounds wasted per year, for what, keeping a light on all night.
- What about television shops? PC World? Currys? Etc etc You walk into these shops and you’re see a massive selection of televisions, every single one switched on playing a film! Why? What a waste of energy and money! Have them turned off and if someone wants to see the picture quality, they can ask and engage with a sale advisor. This was surely increase the chances of them actually being able to sell the TV in the first place. You walk into a shop and see 5 TV’s all playing the same thing, but none of the picture qualities will be accurate because the signal is split from a single source. People look, decided they don’t like the picture of any of them and walk away. The sales team could have a couple of portable DVD players that they could simply plug into each tv in turn to show the true quality of the screen. This is starting to turn into a sales training, I’ll stop rambling! Although I may go and called DSG Group with my idea! lol
I hope from this you can all see where I’m coming from, lets not try and stop expansion to protect the planet, lets try and use our heads to see ways to reducing the damage we are causing through normal day activities that won’t reduce our quality of life or reduce our (collective) ontological horizon as a species.
Submitted by ZIO4 on Thursday 18 December 2008 - 01:27.
Suppose it is necessary to increase flight capacity, it hardly seems right to do this by building another runway anywhere where there is literally no room, creating a need for enforced purchase orders.
What is the ratio, 90% of the people of these islands live on 10% of the land, because the rest of the land is owned by we know not really whom, because it has been in the hands of families since before the Land Registry was set up.
It seems to make little sense to force people from homes and communities when the south east handles most of the traffic in and out of the UK but only has 5 of the 30 UK airports handling transport category commercial jet traffic. This will just concentrate more flights in an already congested sector of the country. It would make more sense to construct a purpose built airport between major urban areas in the midlands or the north of England.
Better still government should try to deal with that large elephant in the cornerof the room that they have been carefully ignoring for so long, the transportation crisis in Britain. What crisis is that, the one we have become so accustomed to that it doesn't really seem like a crisis, but look at it in the light of the 150 million tons of fuel burned by vehicles each year while caught in traffic jams and idling at traffic lights.
Nobody seems to know what to do, or is the answer actually quite simple. Monorail systems. I hear that the objection to these is that the companies that would bid for these engineering projects (light engineering) don't make as much money as for other types of road and rail projects (heavy engineering - including tunnels and bridges and so on), so monorails are talked down, all over the world actually.
The advantage of monorail is that it has such a small footprint. It is not necessary to buy up large amounts of costly real estate and the monorail towers take up little space. Monorail projects take much less time to complete than traditional road and rail systems, monorail can go where road and rail cannot, over the rooftops and overhead existing road and rail lines, and finally, monorail can be routed alongside existing roads and motorways in particular.
Imagine the impact of being stuck on the M25 'parking lot' every day and seeing people travelling by monorail speeding by every few minutes.
Imagine the discovery that much of the domestic air route capacity is unnecessary, and that new runways and airports aren't necessary any longer.
The rail franchises are already trying to deal with overcrowding and undercapacity by making rush hour travel so expensive that more and more people are being forced away from rail travel. This is because this is transportation as a for profit enterprise and not an essential service enterprise.
We are not building new roads, not so that it makes any difference anyway.
It almost seems as if the message from the transportation industry is we don't want your business and government seems to be saying we can't figure this out it's too hard for us, just stay at home.
An organised covered way cycle system would make a big difference, but heck that's not a sexy way to travel and many of us are not physically capable, though we could change that.
I wonder how many people know that you can claim a business allowance of 20p per mile for work travel by bicycle.
Actually, the more you think about it, the more solutions just keep showing up, so I guess we like the mess we have, no well somebody must.
Submitted by Neo on Thursday 18 December 2008 - 13:48.
In my opinion, Plane Stupid are little more than terrorists, doing what they did. The world is facing a crisis as our carbon emissions continue to pollute the environment - but doing stupid, childish and illegal stunts like this only suggest that nutters and paranoiacs believe in climate change. If people like these are the only ones trying to raise awareness of climate change then people will simply ignore the message and deliberately disbelieve what they see as the rantings of madmen, and criminals.
Climate change is a massive threat and is very real - insipiring unprecedented support the world over from scientists. Direct Action as Plane Stupid (and several terrorist groups around the world) call it, are just idiotic stunts and true progress can be achieved via debate, reason and negotiation. Let's say this runway does not get built - next will Plane Stupid chain themselves to planes because they want Airports banned altogether? Where do reason and sense fit into their schema? Does it at all for that matter? We live in a democracy and not a dictatorship where illegal action is needed to prevent crimes against humanity - instead, we live in a democracy where idiots drink in the dream of revolution like a lovelorn teenager soaking in the rose-tinted love stories of the movies, and decides to make an issue where there is not an issue. If climate protesters have a problem, take it up with America, which refuses to sign the Kyoto Protocol. Take it up with China, which is industrializing rapidly with complete disregard for their worker's rights or health and safety - not Britain, which has been ordered several times to cut carbon emissions faster and faster or face sanctions.
Submitted by MarkH on Thursday 18 December 2008 - 19:54.
The kind of action we saw recently does nothing for these important issues. Combined with the kind of hyperbole used in this blog, it makes it easy to attribute concern on climate change to a fringe single issue element of society.
The name 'Plane Stupid' embodies an arrogant and self righteous attitude, which appears designed to shutdown debate by implying that dissent makes you stupid.
It's a shame that important climate change issues are overshadowed by groups like this.
Submitted by Tony Martyr on Saturday 20 December 2008 - 11:24.
I found the 'sense of urgency' section of the blog compelling. I am not of the Iraq generation if that means under 25 years old and recently disillusioned by the fact that, politicians who have the power to enact their private agendas, take no notice of popular opinion. But I think that those of the Suez generation can join the Iraq generation in their sense of frustrated urgency; then one has to consider what action to take with the energy engendered by that frustration.
I have to travel frequently by air for work; I would therefore have been intensely annoyed by the actions of 'Plane Stupid' at Stansted but, faced with such situations I have been taught to run my late Grandmothers test -"who is on the side of the angels?" - this is not easy for an atheist like me but, irritated as I would be, I do think that the protesters are a necessary balance against the rest of us quiescent masses who do nothing in the face of a disaster that mankind is accelerating.
My experience in senior management and limited experience of politicians tells me that they will try to get away with as much as possible in following their selfish aims and are only controlled by public censure and criticism (which is why we have a 'loyal opposition).
Meanwhile I am taking S369 which is not conducive to a sense of optimism about our climatic future, Im just glad I have a house 250 meters above sea-level
Submitted by Caravel on Wednesday 31 December 2008 - 16:28.
The problem with people like Plane Stupid is that when you say "DO something" you don't actually mean "do something", you mean "follow precisely every detail of our ill-thought-out, poorly researched, ill-founded, astronomically expensive, economically and scientifically illiterate programme". The UK Government has done something, and it is doing something. It has set itself - meaning British factories, businesses, power stations - tougher carbon limits than any other country - limits which represent real economic cost and a significantly increased risk of not having enough electricity generating capacity to keep the lights (and hospital equipment, and elderly people's heating systems) on in a few years' time. You should be in Germany, where simultaneously they are wasting colossal sums of money on solar panels which deliver minimal carbon and energy saving benefit and at the same time protecting coal-fired power stations from carbon costs and phasing out nuclear power.