Environmentalists and activists opposed to the expansion of Heathrow Airport condemned the government’s decision not to review its policy on the plan.
The Department of Transport has rejected pressure to abandon the Airport National Policy Statement (ANPS), which is at the center of a legal debate about the potential environmental impact of the third runway project in West London.
The Secretary of Transportation, Grant Shapps (Grant Shapps) believes that “it is currently not suitable to review ANPS based on climate change or carbon policy”.
Accident
DfT stated that Mr. Schaps acknowledged that “significant and unforeseen changes have taken place” since the policy was formulated, including the government’s commitment to achieve a net zero emission target by 2050 and the declaration of a “climate emergency” by the parliament.
“However, he believes that if these situations are predicted at the time of designation, it is impossible to correctly conclude that any policy specified in ANPS will be significantly different,” DfT said in its official response to the call. proceed checking.
The chairman of the Third Runway Alliance, Paul McGuinness, stated that the British government “wasted this opportunity and gave up the expansion of Heathrow once and for all”, which was disappointing and “illogical”.
inevitable
Geraldine Nicholson from the campaign organization Stop Heathrow Expansion said it was “very frustrating.”
She claimed: “The expansion of Heathrow Airport will not pass the planning stage of the whole process, so why continue to implement this policy now.”
“Of course this is not in our national interest. Thousands of local people near Heathrow Airport have to endure the pending proposal, and the government decides how to best save face by canceling the plan. This decision is just postponing the inevitable. .”
Greenpeace
Dr. Doug Parr, Chief Scientist of Greenpeace UK, said: “The government claims that the developments in the past few years, including the parliamentary declaration of a climate emergency and the government’s legal commitment to reduce net carbon emissions to zero, are on their airport expansion plans.
“Therefore, the new runway, along with new roads, new oil fields and new coal mines, are included in the list of high-carbon infrastructure, and we can safely ignore its impact.
“But the fact is that the only way that a substantial increase in carbon emissions has nothing to do with the promise to eliminate carbon emissions is whether the promise is dishonest.”
activist
Referring to the Prime Minister’s previous public statement against the expansion of Heathrow Airport, Dr. Pal added: “When Boris said he would lie in front of the bulldozer, we thought he was an activist trying to stop them, not as an aviation industry. Defender.”
