Los Angeles on fire. Catastrophic floods in Spain and Australia. Record-breaking storms here at home.These are just a few of the weather-related disasters we’ve seen recently. There were many more round the world that didn’t make the headlines. And now we don’t need scientists to tell us that we’re facing a climate emergency.
How should the Labour government respond to this overwhelming evidence? By moving further and faster with cuts to carbon emissions, surely.
Ministers could (for example) push ahead with insulating our homes and workplaces, which would also give everyone lower energy bills. Or they might do more to improve bus and rail services, so that people have a reliable alternative to using their cars. What they shouldn’t be doing, however, is making the problem worse by expanding airports, which the government’s own Climate Change Committee have already warned against. But it looks as if that advice will be ignored.
A third runway at Heathrow would be an environmental disaster for people in west London, with more disruption, noise and air pollution. But it would also have an impact on us here in Sevenoaks, and across south-east England. And those harmful effects will be multiplied if Gatwick expansion is given the go-ahead too.
It was therefore disappointing to hear our MP expressing support for the government’s plans. I hope that Laura Trott will reconsider that view when the implications for her constituents become clear.
The truth is that bigger airports cause huge environmental damage, make the transition to clean energy harder, and are very unlikely to produce the kind of ‘growth’ that this government seems so obsessed with.
Paul Wharton
Source: Sevenoaks Chronicle (p. 12), 6/2/25