CoMutiny - Airport Penguins

Submitted by Toadministrator on Sun, 01/02/2011 - 14:26

Bristol CoMutiny: Homeless penguins invade Bristol airport
17 September 2009

 

Rising Tide was one of many groups taking part in the Bristol Co-Mutiny week of action. While we are group of activists focussing on tackling the root causes of climate chaos we wanted to make the links with other issues and campaigns. In particular we wanted to show that the exploitation of fossil fuels by big corporate interests is resulting in mass migration, resource wars, and widespread social injustice. Like all the groups involved in Co-Mutiny, we want to confront the forces of capitalism. This is the root cause of climate chaos. Key targets in the week of action were Bristol International Airport, BT Pensions who are investing in opencast coal mining in South Wales and the big banks which finance the oil, gas, and coal industries.

 

On Thursday 17th September, a dozen homeless penguins invaded Bristol International Airport and handed out leaflets highlighting the impact of airport expansion, and therefore increased CO2 emissions, on climate change. Due to the current pace of climate change and resulting melting of the ice sheet some Emperor penguin colonies have halved in numbers.

 

Airport Penguins

 

The planned increase in commercial flights at Bristol from 6.2m in 2008 to 10m by 2016 will also contribute in the increased suffering for millions of humans. From flood plains in Bangladesh, to islanders in the Maldives being forced to leave due to sea level rises, and Africans faced with drought - large areas of the world are becoming uninhabitable as a result of climate change. The poorest people are the worst affected - people who will never fly anywhere.

 

Locally the BIA expansion will mean a flight every 210 seconds over 16 hours of normal opening hours and thus more noise pollution for local residents. Increased passenger numbers mean increased road traffic with a projected extra 2 million car journeys per year, and an estimated cost to the local council of £50m in order to extend the Bus Rapid Transport system from central Bristol

 

The aviation sector currently amounts to 13% of the UK’s total climate impact and this will grow to 30% with BIA and other UK airport expansion plans. This is at a time when the UK Government has committed the UK to an 80% cut in CO2 emissions by 2050. In order to achieve this with the current plans for airport expansion across the country such as that at BIA, we would need to reduce emissions from all other sectors by an additional 10% to 90%. In order to make up this additional 10% ordinary people are expected to work even harder just to compensate for companies like BIA, Easyjet and Ryanair expanding their profits. Once again the government is clearly putting big business’s interests first – this has been a constant theme of the Co-Mutiny week of action.

Airport Penguins

Community