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 The Government says it desperately seeks new land for building airports, they say there's no alternative. But there is. Let's stop accommodating the growth in flights. Let's price them out of the skies.
says Guardian columnist George Monbiot
| | |  Should we allow unchecked growth in air travel?Do you agree? Join the discussion by calling 0870 010 0444, lines open at 1.30pm. | |
In George Orwell's novel 1984, Britain had been transformed into Airstrip One, a giant landing stage for the continental powers. It's beginning to look horribly plausible.
As the government desperately seeks new land for building airports, it's surely only a matter of time before they start to coalesce into one colossal runway. At the rate air transport's expanding, we'll need four new Heathrows in the next eighteen years.
The government says there's no alternative but to keep building. But there is an alternative. Let's stop accommodating the growth in flights. Let's price them out of the skies.
It's not hard to see why people are flying more often. Unlike anything else we buy, flights just get cheaper and cheaper. Pick up any paper and you'll find adverts for trips to Europe for £30, £20, even, in some cases, nothing at all.
The airlines say this is the free market at work. Free lunch more like. Air transport can keep growing in Britain only because all of us, whether we fly or not, are subsidising its growth.
The airlines pay no fuel tax and no VAT. But while they contribute next to nothing to the Exchequer, they're one of the biggest polluters in the economy. One study shows that when all the costs they impose on society are taken into account, every one of us, every year, pays £182 to keep their planes in the sky.
What are we getting for our money? Nothing, except poor health and unhappiness. People who live close to airports appear to suffer from more sleeplessness, anxiety and depression than people living in quiet places.
One study has shown that the use of sedatives increases by eight per cent under the flight path. Research conducted in Sweden suggests that the reading ability of 12-14 year olds exposed to aircraft noise is impaired by 23 per cent. And this is to say nothing of local pollution, or the airlines' impact on global climate change.
Some people counter this by arguing that cheap flights permit the poor to fly to places which, until recently, only the rich could visit. This is true, but it's hard to see why we should be spending scarce public resources on luxuries.
And because rich people tend to fly more often than poor people, while the people who live beside the airport are the ones who can't afford to move away, the real transfer of wealth -- and happiness and peace of mind -- is from the poor to the rich.
So let's stop subsidising misery, and force the airlines to carry their own costs, rather than dumping them on the rest of us. And, instead of trying to find more room for more aircraft, let's stop the growth in flights. Next time you leave your troubles behind, spare a thought for the people you leave them with. For someone, far below, is shaking their fist at you.
Do you agree?
Join the discussion by calling 0870 010 0444
lines open at 1.30pm.
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RELATED LINKS | | | Airport expansion plans - a report from the Today programme
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