Our Climate Conversation

Let’s get some reality into the economic arguments for growth above all else. In a time of Climate and Environmental Crises we should be lazer-focused on effective policies to tackle these – policies that redistribute wealth, that encourage businesses to take regenerate actions, all of which benefit the majority of people and the environment in which we live. For the UK, net zero carbon also offers a powerful driver of growth in the short and medium term.

Starmer and Reeves have now announced that growth trumps all, and cast aviation expansion as a prime mechanism.

Already the number of UK air flights (56 million in 2024) have increased dramatically in the last decades thanks mainly to their relative cheapness. But so have aviation carbon emissions – they now stand at 8% in UK (2% globally) and also release other gases that seed heat-trapping clouds in the upper atmosphere which triples air travel’s greenhouse effect. Legally binding carbon budgets should therefore see reduced leisure air travel, more rail investment and ministers keeping net zero promises. There is a strong case for taking fewer flights (by removing subsidies and increasing taxes in line with other forms of travel), frequent flyer levies, and restrictions on domestic flights as have been introduced in France.

A New Economics Foundation report(2023) entitled Boom in air travel fails to increase UK productivity or GDP growth states: “For years, this government has let the air travel industry balloon in size, based on dangerously outdated claims that it is boosting the UK’s economy. The reality is declining business air travel, declining wages for air travel workers, declining job numbers, and declining domestic tourism spending in the UK. And that’s before you consider the rise in noise, air pollution and dangerous emissions driven by UK airports. So who exactly is benefitting from ever more air travel? You needn’t look much further than the highly paid executives, the private shareholders, and the wealthy minority of ultra-frequent flyers.”

Indeed air travel is very unequal – in UK, half the population do not fly at all, and of those that do, 10% account for 50% of all flights. Even worse are the millionaire set who use private jets into obscure specialist airports, like taxis. And the “sustainable aviation fuels” the government plans to rely on hardly exist, and won’t materialise at scale.

In 2020 Starmer sent a congratulatory message to climate campaigners who blocked airport expansion at Heathrow in the Court of Appeal saying “there is no more important challenge than the climate emergency ”

Brave Labour MP Clive Lewis reminds us: “Reeves once championed the foundation economy – lifelong learning, public services, local industries and wealth redistribution. Whatever happened to that vision?….. Why pledge to be clean and green, only to undermine that commitment with a Heathrow expansion promise six months later? Burning the furniture to stay warm doesn’t signal confidence – it reeks of panic.“

Labour’s approach sacrifices bold action for short-term appeasement of business. It also weakens trust in politics leaving space open for its populist opponents to fill.