‘The consequences of this decision on the climate crisis are enormous’

On Tuesday it was announced that the High Court have rejected the appeal of Bristol Airport Action Network (BAAN) against the decision of the Planning Inspectorate to allow Bristol Airport to expand by 2 million passengers a year.

The consequences of this decision on the climate crisis are enormous, especially as its only the beginning for the airport, who reaffirmed over Christmas that they are not stopping here but are aiming to more than double in size from 10 to 20 million passengers a year.

BAAN have long said that this planning application is the biggest climate decision in the region for a generation. Our leading experts stated at the inquiry that the expansion alone will increase carbon emissions by an extra million tonnes a year.

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Read more: Bristol Airport expansion given green light by High Court
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To put that in context, all of Bristol’s transport; all the the cars, buses and lorries, produce half a million tonnes of carbon a year. There is also the increase in noise disturbance, night flights and damage to the Green Belt.

To make it even worse, there are up to twenty other regional airports looking to expand who will use this judgement to aid their own planning applications.

For these reasons, BAAN, having taken legal advice from our King’s Counsel, will be applying to appeal to the Court of Appeal to overturn this decision.

People can learn more about the judge’s decision and express their opinions at a rally planned on Saturday February 4 at 12:00am at College Green. We will also be launching a crowd funder for further legal costs at that event.

The decision itself makes difficult and puzzling reading and reflects the confused (and confusing) state of UK aviation policy and the keeper of this mess is the secretary of state, Michael Gove.

The judge basically agreed with all the interpretations made by the inspectors but ‘bookends’ his 80 page judgment with comments about the reality of the climate crisis; quoting for example, the UN secretary-general Antonio Guterres when he called the scientific assessment of climate change ‘code red for humanity.’

Bristol Airport Expansion Network outside Bristol Civil Justice Centre on Tuesday – photo: Betty Woolerton

The airport had argued, and the judge agreed, that the national policies, which encourage growth of airports (especially one called ‘Making Best Use’ from 2018), must trump any local carbon emission policies.

The judge said that emissions from planes are the sole responsibility of the secretary of state and it must be assumed that he will comply with his legal duty under the Climate Change Act to reach net zero by 2050.

The problem with this however is that Michael Gove has no legal obligation to assess the carbon implications of planning applications such as Bristol Airport and in this case he has chosen not to do so. The effect of all this is that nowhere in the system are the increased carbon emissions being accounted for in the UK carbon budget.

That’s right. No government body; not the national planning inspectorate nor the secretary of state have considered the impact of a million tonnes a year extra carbon emissions from these expansion plans. This amount of carbon has effectively ‘disappeared’.

In another different but related point from the judgment, the planning inspectors considered the scale of extra emissions from Bristol Airport’s planned expansion. They concluded that, even if they were accounted for, they would not threaten the government’s ability to hit the UK’s national carbon targets.

This is an argument often used as a delay tactic by climate delayers – ‘well it’s such a ‘small increase’ in relation to the UK, China, the world’s carbon budget, why not let it through?’. Clearly this would always be the case for any ‘individual’ project no matter how large it was!?

At the inquiry BAAN’s legal team and experts made the argument about the need to look at all the airports with expansion plans together and for that cumulative carbon emission assessment to be published. We asked for this repeatedly but our requests were ignored.

Another baffling area of the judgment deals with what are called ‘Non-CO2 gases’. There are short-term warming impacts from contrails and other gases emitted by planes and the scientific consensus is that they have even more impact on the climate than the carbon emissions; perhaps two to three times as much.

The government’s own advisors, the Climate Change Committee, have told them that the impact can be anything from 1.7 to 3.5 times as great. The Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy use a ‘multiplier’ of 1.9.

The airport, the inspectors and the judge agreed that these damaging gases would be emitted from the extra planes planned but said that, because there was no agreement on the scale of them, then they could be basically ignored. This seems wilfully ridiculous.

So where do go from here? This is not the end of the long and winding road that we have all travelled to try and get some protection from the endless growth agenda of Bristol Airport. The airport applied for this expansion in 2018 and together we have delayed them by over four years and saved the emission of millions of tonnes of carbon.

We will continue to fight on by issuing an application to the Court of Appeal because science is on our side and local people don’t want this expansion. We thank everyone for all the support we have received today and over the last four years and reiterate that BRISTOL AIRPORT IS BIG ENOUGH!

Stephen Clarke is a former Green Party councillor for Southville and member of BAAN

Main photo: BAAN

Read more: 

• Airport flyer bus blockaed by XR youth activists
• Bristol Airport clashes with anti-expansion campaigners in court
• ‘Bristol Airport expansion must be stopped’

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