On Gatwick Airport’s New Proposed Runway to Hell

(Open Floor Hearing, May 2 2024)

“Good afternoon and thank you to the inspectorate and the organisers.  According to the UN Climate Chief, we have just two years to save the world.  According to many scientists studying our planet’s climate and the 10 million species who live on this planet, it is already too late given that a catastrophic rise in temperature is already baked in.  According to the daily human casualties from weather disasters and other impacts of the climate crisis, it is also, already too late.  And according to the countless species currently going extinct, it is also already late.  The Great Barrier Reef, the largest organism on Earth which is home to 1 in 4 marine species, has entered an irreversible extinction spiral this year, and I wish this was my only example but there are countless others.  We are losing this planet like sand slipping through our fingers as we speak.  Everything around us is on a collapse trajectory, and this is the context within which we are meeting today.  It is a tragedy that we are having this meeting not to find solutions, but to decide between making this context even worse by a Gatwick expansion, or simply stay put and watch things collapse anyway.

My friends, we are meeting at a time of war.  Not only the war in Gaza and Ukraine, but humanity’s war against the planet: a war which we are losing. We are meeting to discuss the Gatwick Airport expansion on a planet which has long ago reached a limit of how much human expansion it can take and is breaking down at a speed which is beyond the most pessimistic scenarios. This, my dear friends, is the context, which I want you to remember throughout this process.  Because you are living in it.  It is called the climate crisis.  And it is bigger than you, it is bigger than Gatwick, and it is definitely bigger than the economy, jobs, flights, holidays and cocktails on a Greek island.  It is bigger than healthcare, it is bigger than food, it is bigger than global security, your family, your friends, your children and everything you like to do in your spare time.  Because you won’t be able to do any of those things, if we continue on the path to self-destruction.

You will hear many rational arguments favouring the expansion of Gatwick. They will focus on the benefits, and perhaps also admit that there are some drawbacks.  But how do you balance a decision, when the drawback, is the very survival of civilisation?  How can we possibly even be tempted by whatever advantages there are, when it literally means pushing the acceleration pedal on the climate crisis by increasing emissions?  – not only via additional flights, but through the expansion of all carbon-intensive economic activities associated with Gatwick operations. By endorsing this expansion, we are consciously opting for short-term lifestyle benefits, at the expense of existentially disastrous future consequences. 

We should all be ashamed that we are even here today actually.  We should be spending our time working on policies of degrowth and scaling back of our airports, rather than deciding whether we want to elevate this crisis from catastrophic to apocalyptic. 

We should be ashamed to claim to be a species who takes on difficult challenges.  Given how we are globally failing to respond to the challenge of the climate crisis, this is a myth.  Because the only challenges we have taken on in our history have been the easy ones:  we have built our civilisations, our cities, our airports, hastily by appropriating resources, destroying other species’ habitats, and exploiting our fellow humans.  The real challenge, is to build a civilisation without having to steal, destroy, and drive everything to extinction.  This is possible, but by continuing on a path of constant economic expansion we seem to have given up, before even considering this challenge, the greatest challenge we have ever faced, and one which we have absolutely no option of turning our back on.  This, my friends, is existential.  This, is the end game.  By expanding, we are self-destructing.

We should be ashamed to be living in own parallel reality, a planet within a planet, where we think we can continue to lie to ourselves.  Sure, we can build another runway, we might as well build another five Gatwicks.  Maybe this planet can take another 5 billion humans.  Maybe we can continue to pump CO2 into the atmosphere. I don’t think you want to find out, and I hate to break it to you, but this imaginary planet does not exist. It is fictional, it is an economic bubble. And like all bubbles, this is a thermodynamically unstable situation. The ecosystem is not a supermarket.  You don’t get to have whatever you want, whenever you want it.  You don’t get to build as many runways as you want.  Yet we have stolen from nature, bankrupted this planet, destroyed the atmosphere and climate, just so that billions of consumatronic humans can have infinite choice of where they fly to and generate infinite emissions.

We should be ashamed.  Because we have prostituted ourselves to profit, by condemning the future of our children, just so that we can have the iPhones, burgers and travel getaways which they won’t have, let alone even be able to remember what an iphone or a burger, or a holiday was.  Because they will be busy fighting each other for food.

Whoever supports this expansion, should be ashamed of themselves.  They will have murder on their hands, literally.  But before they can plead naivety, or lack of information on the seriousness of the situation at the time of their decision, The Green Party is making sure, today, that they know what they are supporting.  And myself or others may or may not be present in the future, when these people are judged and they are asked the question:  why on Earth did you support this, when you had all this information?”

George is an author, researcher, molecular biologist and food scientist. You can follow him on Twitter @99blackbaloons 

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