I agree with you that it’s a shame that the government have chosen this route – however, air travel is a necessity to keep up with the pace of the global economy. Having recently traveled through Dubai – the size of their airport really hit me – it’s HUGE!

However, it’s a little bit of a vicious circle… if we don’t develop our aiports to keep up with the new global economy – then we’ll lose wealth as a country – and be less able to research and develop greener ideas. I think we need to force the government to have a much more strict ‘green agenda’ rather than to halt ‘progress.’

I read the paper a bit whilst I was in India – and one of the comments a political commentator made was that “The West’s CO2 emissions are largely ‘lifestyle emissions’ whilst India, China and other developing nations’ CO2 emissions were ‘necessity’ emissions.”

Unfortunately, I think expanding the airports are a necessity – however, leaving the emissions (both chemical and noise) from planes unchecked is the greater issue. We need to be pushing the development of a green agenda in everything. Geoff Hoon stated in his speech, that reducing car emissions by relatively little would offset the pollutants produced by this new extension.

I, unfortunately, don’t agree with ‘offsetting’ – it’s a buzz word that doesn’t improve the problem, but stops it from getting worse than the current level. Like ‘tolerance’ it’s a temporary measure, and not a solution. We need to be improving the efficiency of everything – and maybe changing things at a more fundamental level.

The one comment that really changed my mind of Heathrow was that if the runway weren’t to be built, the secondary option would be for mixed-use.. but due to planes having to circle around Heathrow (burning fuel that otherwise wouldn’t need to be burned) the level of pollution falling on the surrounding area would actually increase.

There’s much more to be said on the issue – and it’s a fine balancing act. However, I think that the external pressure of other countries wanting to fly into Britain means that the government had little choice. Especially given the current economic climate, putting a limit on incoming air traffic into Britain would be massively damaging.