Should Airport expansion be halted?

Up to 2,000 people are due at the Camp for Climate Action, with 250 already at the week-long protest against Heathrow expansion plans and aviation generally. Should airport expansions be held responsible for the danger of climate change?

One of the reasons of an increase in air travel is an unprecedented increase in tourism. it is a vital sector. Less air travel will simply cause a chain of events: less hotel booking, less use of other tourist facilities like buses, travel agencies, restaurants, new tourist projects, more redundancies in unprofitable sectors etc?

Is there any country ready to throw the fruit of tourism by stopping the expansion of airport facilities? Neither UK nor any other country will prevent its people from travelling to other parts of the world comfortably.

Air travel isn't only a pleasure activity, it is also one of the important activities that keep the economy going.

Air travel relatively plays a small part in climate change. Even curbing on air travel won’t stop the damage done to earth. There are constantly more factories and power stations all over the world. Economic boom leads to car consumption with their increasing carbon emission. If it is possible to stop the expansion of airports for environmental reasons, there can be no stop to factories expansion. There is no country ready to curtail its economic activities with its social and political risks. You can persuade people to sacrifice their time by taking land transportation like trains, but you can’t ask them to remain in abject economic conditions because there is the danger of climate change.

What is needed is innovation at all industrial level to make efficient machines working the most possible minimum of energy that can the biggest minimum damage to the climate.

Dreamliner is a good step towards making the air cleaner. The question is whether all the existing fleet of planes can be replaced with this new model. This will surely take decades in view of the cost and time constraint even for the company itself. The world still has to cohabit with these apparently old models which can be comfortable for journeys but they continue to make environmentalists uncomfortable or rather hot under the collar because of the advancing threat of global warming.

Ironically planes are still considered as a pride for individuals and countries. The more planes states have and the more planes people take, that is a sign of prosperity. The international shows are just an opportunity to attract more companies to buy while advertising make people eager to travel by air. (As according to the environmentalists, travelling by air is a health risk for the planet, should there be no advertisement for air travel or on plane tickets should there be warning on how many tons of carbons are emitted on each journey?

It seems the environmentalists are trying to scare people off air travel by using sound arguments to keep the Earth safe from global warming. The companies are concerned just about the safety of their planes and customers as well as the benefits. While financial interests and environmental concerns clash irreconcilably, the whole matter remains in the hands of the customers who in most cases choose the easiest means regardless of the long term consequences, especially when they are faced with contradictory arguments dumped with assurances that now we haven’t reached the critical stage yet and that technological researches can yield astounding solutions.