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Friday, January 09, 2009

Meeting and greeting passengers

Just before Christmas, we meeted and greeted passengers arriving at Gloucestershire Airport to explain climate change and why they needed to take personal responsibilty.

We had previously hoped that reason had triumphed over stupidity with the Gloucester Council's decision at their scrutiny committee meeting to reject the airport's expansion proposals, however no such luck. The airport came before the committee again, but this time armed with a "green environmental management" plan which claims that they and Manx2.com can expand their business and not increase green house gas emissions. This would not fool an average 5 year old. However, Gloucester council is not made up of average 5 year olds, instead they unanimously accepted the proposals and said that they would "trust" the airport to get its emissions down. This is despite the airport have been found to be lying on every claim that they have made about the project, and clearly needing to break all the laws of physics to comply with the green management plan.

Climate change leaflets were handed out to passengers arriving and departing. These explained that runaway climate change has now started and that the latest predictions are that the Arctic ice cap will be gone in the summer by 2015, the situation will be unrecoverable by 2030 and the seas will be devoid of fish by 2050. Yet despite this, Gloucester council is going to use council tax payers money to back an airport expansion.

We would like to thank the passengers who expressed concern about climate change and now appreciate the urgency of action. This was unlike the airport staff, who described us as hippies, banned us from the terminal building and called the police.