Re*Move

Airbus thinking about fuel cells, Easyjet about open rotors

By Joe Simpson.

Airbus_a380

Interesting to hear - in what are pressured times for the aviation industry on green issues, that airbus is exploring hydrogen fuel cells for use in its next generation of aircraft. According to flightglobal and news on the energy savings trust site, not only is airbus studying techniques for the extraction of hydrogen from kerosene (work that one out) but is also looking at how hydrogen could be used in a fuel cell powering the Auxillary Power Unit (APU) of the aircraft. The company completed the successful first test of a fuel-cell APU at the Singapore airshow yesterday.

Elsewhere - in an interesting week for aviation, Easyjet gave engine manufacturers a prod on future engine technologies, maintaining its desire to see 'open-rotor' engine technology (which it claims is likely to reduce fuel consumption by around 30%) by 2015 saying:

“Do we have to wait for the laggard manufacturer whereas the first manufacturer might be ready by 2015 and the second by 2018?”

It seems that as fuel/oil costs continue to rise, and public awareness about environmental impact is heightened, more and more airlines are looking for environmental and efficiency gains. Easyjet were joined (somewhat surprisingly) earlier in the week by American Airlines in suggesting they're keen on open rotors - according to VP of operations Bob Reding:

'open rotor technology "seems to be really a paradigm shift in fuel consumption”'

He suggested that American would be very interested in the technology on the next generation of narrow-bodied planes it ordered.

All of this happened against the back-drop of headlines in Britain that country residents were going to be disturbed more as flight paths were reorganised to route away from urban areas, and that London Mayor Ken Livingstone - in the build up to mayoral elections in May - has stepped up his opposition to a third runway at Heathrow. I shall not comment on either of these last two, except to say that these are interesting times indeed in the world of aviation - but I'm still keen to know if the debate is as hysterical on the subject anywhere as much as it is here in Britain.

Image: A380 - by jmiguel.rodriguez on flickr under a creative commons license.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 21st February 2008

February 22, 2008 in Aviation, Cities, Energy, Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Is Heathrow finally getting its act together?

By Joe Simpson.

747_headon

As we headed out to America, it was notable how much more pleasant the (Heathrow) airport experience was this time around. As Heathrow gears up for the opening of Terminal 5 in March, it has made the thought of traveling through the existing motley-crew of cobbled together buildings even less appetising.

And in general, Heathrow is still a pretty awful place to have to endure. But it seems as though one airline - in particular (with some help from BAA), is really trying to improve the experience for their passengers on the ground. So stand up Virgin Atlantic, whose new T3 check-in zone brings a previously unheard of level of light, airy, spaciousness to a grotty, busy terminal. And no, I'm not talking about the uber-swish new upper class section, this is the bit for plebs like me who rough it in economy!

T3_gate5a
Terminal 3, Gate 5: Light, airy, spacious.

In addition (and I can't say whether or not this is a new section of gates or not, but it's the first time I've had the pleasure of using them) the left hand series of Gates (1-7) actually manages to give the impression of a bright, airy, modern international airport - with good view across the southern runway and beyond to Terminal 4. There's extensive use of glass and blond wood, which is extremely pleasant - and, frankly, comes as a bit of shock!

The_view_towards_t4
View across the south runway and toward Terminal 4. It's always nice to be able to see out at an airport I think.

Ok, so the bit you negotiate between check in and gate is still fairly dire, but at least there appears to have been some thought and effort gone into this latest redevelopment - with customer experience (rather than retail outlets) given top priority. It bodes well for Terminal 5 and the subsequent Heathrow 'East' development - which will see the demolition of existing Terminals 1 and 2. If things continue at this pace, there's a risk that the on-ground experience might eventually become better than it is in the air... which when you think about it, ought not to be that hard!

Check out Virgin's new Heathrow Terminal 3 microsite here.

Related articles:
Could Britain be getting a world class airport experience at last?
BA on airport expansion

Images: Joseph Simpson for the Movement Design Bureau - images are available for use through a creative commons license. Please reference this page.

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 15th February 2008

February 15, 2008 in Aviation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Could Britain be getting a world class airport experience at long last?

T5_from_the_air

To say that it has been a long time coming would perhaps be the understatement of the century. But early in the morning on March 28th 2008, for the first time, a British Airways Boeing 747 will complete its long overnight haul from Hong Kong by taxi-ing to a gate at the brand new Heathrow Terminal 5.

Anyone who has the (dis)pleasure of using Heathrow on a frequent basis will be all too aware of how desperately needed this new terminal is. Heathrow is currently a ramshackle assortment of dark, incoherent sheds. They're disorientating, over-crowded and generally unpleasant (I'm being polite). Terminal 5 promises to bring the kind of experience one gets at other modern international terminals such as Chek-lap-cok, San Francisco International and Munich, to London's massive international hub.

Terminal_5_model

What will be interesting over time is to see whether British Airways have in fact pulled off a remarkable coup, by bagging this terminal all to themselves. It seems fairly likely; if the experience at 'T5' is a good one, how long before word-of-mouth reports start tempting passengers off other airlines and onto BA, purely on the basis that the on-the-ground experience will be so much more pleasant? Some are already suggesting that once T5 opens they'll no longer consider flying on any airline other than BA out of Heathrow... it will be interesting to see how many more follow suit.

And despite whispers on the London social scene that the airport might be outmoded design-wise compared to Madrid Barajas's new Terminal 4 (designed by the same architects - Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners), and that it hasn't performed quite as planned in the people trials that have been going on, Jonathan Glancey's review in the Guardian suggests that in the long term, there'll be very little to worry about, and that T5 could potentially become Britain's next 'Cathedral of Movement'. Read "First class all the way" here.

Related articles:
Air travel: are we about to hang the wrong guy?
Welcome to St. Pancras - London's new cathedral of movement
BA on airport expansion

Images: T5 from the air - Caribb, T5 model - XM&&LL both on Flickr under a creative commons license

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 14th January 2008

January 14, 2008 in Aviation, Media insight | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Welcome to St Pancras - London's New Cathedral of Movement

2019767356_95c9e9af18St Pancras, this afternoon.

One of the reasons I now do what I do is that my dad, when I was a kid, used to take me each week to see the aeroplanes at Speke in Liverpool. The airport was minutes in the car from my grandmother's house in this 'garden suburb' (alas now, an altogether different story, for another day). There we would watch planes, mainly from the 1950s and 60s, trundling out to the Isle of Man, or waiting for the occasional exotic modern jet, diverted, presumably to the deep irritation of passengers, because of fog at Heathrow, or Manchester, or Prestwick (not) near Glasgow. Indeed I met my first American at Speke - a Transamerica DC10, diverted from god knows. She sat right by the fence on Speke Hall Avenue, the biggest thing I'd ever seen and then left a few hours later, forever imprinted in a nine year old's head.

Speke was one of the first and, when it opened in the 1930s, grandest airport terminals in the world, a wonderful art deco curve overlooking the Mersey estuary and featuring a glorious sweep of spectator's terrace, nearly as impressive as that of the kop at the city's top (obviously) football club, at Anfield. It was a fitting next step for the city that, for many years had staggering volumes of people migrate through it, by ship and onward normally by train, unless they settled and worked in the industries that fuelled this great migration.

Speke_airport

Speke in Liverpool was one of the first and, when it opened in the 1930s, grandest, airport terminals in the world.

By the time I was around, Speke had hit hard times. The terminal was grotty and 1980s Liverpool was in devastating decline, serviced by air with a small number of regular flights in elderly (but wonderful) screeching Vickers Viscounts. To this day I can recognise the sound of their engines, now only in use in a few antique planes. Indeed until last year I would ever so often be awoken in the night by the sound of a Rolls Royce Dart-powered plane, presumably an HS748, flying at high level over London, on some night postal flight between who knows where.

In the late seventies and early eighties, when I was somewhere between 8 and 15, Speke was a relic, the great 1930s dashed-hope of a port city investing in the next big thing. But unlike London, which transitioned from a great port city to become a great airport city, Liverpool stalled and then dived. Families like mine fled the city, which is why I come from a place called Frodsham, famous only for being the home of Gary Barlow of Take That. With all due respect to Gary, who I knew at school and is very nice, it's not quite the home of John, Paul, George and Ringo.

What, you may ask, has this got to do with St Pancras Station?

Well quite a lot, actually. Because as Liverpool declined, London became without doubt Britain's most important gateway city. And while you might think that it understood this was happening, and rebuilt itself to cope, the reality was different. In fact, today, as the first day that Eurostar trains slipped away to accelerate to 186mph for the journey to Europe, we saw London for the first time boldly acknowledge this inheritance. Don't believe me? Well step next door from St Pancras into Kings Cross Station and feel the smallness of ambition to open up the city to the outside. Or travel south of the river and look once again over the once heralded, now empty Eurostar terminal at Waterloo, which for a while seemed very cool but compared to St Pancras seems mere dust.

2019757268_a10c9d84de_o

14.11.07: Waterloo station on its first morning without Eurostar seemed mighty sad.

Because as London expanded its international transport infrastructure through the 1950s, 60s and 70s, there was none of the bold ambition associated with Speke's 1930s airport, despite its tiny size in comparison to even a minor building at Heathrow. And when British Rail was upgrading itself through the 1970s and 80s, launching first the Intercity 125 and the later 225 from Kings Cross to the north and from Paddington (for the 125) out west, there was a sense was that it was trying to compete with aviation, but as an eternal underdog. And to date, the results have felt like that - Kings Cross, just next door, is grim, with a tiny concourse and grubby outlets. Paddington is nice in a Brunel kind of way and Liverpool Street looks okay, despite the fact that the trains from it are, without exception, pathetic. And of course Heathrow is still the most embarrassing place to spend time in Britain.

St Pancras is altogether different. Surely lucky in catching the mood of the time, it is astonishing in its scale, its execution, its sense of history and modernity, and the excellence of the product that it is a gateway to. For as Europeans worry about the ethics and climate impact of short haul air travel, and with the cost of the Channel Tunnel buried somewhere out of the way now, the Eurostar suddenly seems to make a lot of sense. But just like buses, bold international transport infrastructure would appear to all come at once. From March next year, Heathrow Airport will have Terminal 5, by far the most spectacular airport terminal ever built in Britain. I really can't imagine, bar some very unfortunate design problems, why I will ever again fly on an airline apart from British Airways, who has, by a stroke of genius, bagged the entire place.

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St Pancras, 14 November 2007. Champagne anyone?

And while in Britain air travel balances its dual roles of most popular activity (we love flying far away) and most unpopular activity (we know doing so does nasty things to the atmosphere), St Pancras just seems really cool.

In the end, I'm not sure whether St Pancras is the beginning of a great renaissance for new stations. The economics of railways are very problematic, mainly because they are very very expensive and specialise in taking people from where they didn't necessarily want to be to where they don't often want to go, with a transit required at each end to get to A and B, so to speak. Indeed, it takes a twenty minute conversation with the Dutch Super Bus team at TU Delft to realise that while railways evolved as the easiest way to move heavy loads across long distances, requiring rudimentary levelling, wooden supports and the laying of two evenly spaced lines of metal, the design creep ever since has made them very complex, expensive and of questionable utility to many. Rail has many flaws - an inability for one thing to pass another, of the need to go in a fairly straight line often across land full of things and of the inability to climb steep slopes. Add to that the fact that demand peaks are very expensive to handle, because you need extra trains for the busy times, which can't be redeployed elsewhere, unlike planes which are hugely redeployable and thus have far better utilisation on capital employed. Add also the fact that, much of the time, the pathway itself isn't actually being used. Have you ever stood by a railway line? Most of the time nobody is going past. It is sometimes surprising we've stuck with railways as a system.

And as for Speke Airport? Well the old terminal closed in 1986, sat derelict for many years and was then thankfully converted into a Marriott Hotel which is quite nice, if a bit corporate. The functioning airport moved a mile or so southeast to a new airfield, was renamed John Lennon Airport, features an enormous tin shed as a terminal and is now one of the busiest low cost airline hubs in Britain.

What all this says about the state of rail and air travel is a long discussion and frankly just for today we shouldn't worry about it. After Joe and I spent an hour or two absorbed in the atmosphere of St Pancras station this afternoon, I took a tube back to Bermondsey. The only thing I could find on my iPod that felt right was Bach's St Matthew Passion. I can assure you I don't normally sit on the tube listening to grand orchestras and soaring choirs. But today the indie bands from Liverpool and Manchester can take a rest. Because London has a new cathedral - to the journey. I'd urge everyone to see it and enjoy what is says about the past and the future of how we travel.

Mark Charmer is director of The Movement Design Bureau. Posted on 14 November 2007.

Photo credits: Stewart Bale Ltd Archive. Rest are MDB.

November 14, 2007 in Analysis, Aviation, Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (1)

The history of hovering

403170234_3d5f336c59_b

The date is open to debate, but Wired appears to have decided that today is as good a point as any to mark the (roughly) 100th year anniversary of the helicopter - an often over looked form of movement it must be said! Click on the link to see a great chronological history of the development of the device, and the history of 'staying airborne while stationary'.

Picture: Elvis Payne on Flickr via Creative Commons license

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 13th November 2007

November 13, 2007 in Aviation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

The Economist analyses the A380

A380

Without wishing to appear as though we've turned into some kind of aviation-enthusiast site, it's worth flagging up a fantastic article in The Economist yesterday. Entitled "The Giant on the Runway" the piece is a feature on Airbus's new super jumbo - the A380, as it prepares to enter into service in a couple of weeks. What's notable is how well balanced the piece is in looking at the issues facing the future of aviation, and analysing how the various new airliners coming to market from both Boeing and Airbus might fit into the picture - rather than a yah-boo-sucks Boeing vs Airbus approach that tends to be taken in some other media and websites.

Read The full Economist article here.

Related articles:
Boeing delays the Dreamliner
British Airways takes the plunge


Posted by Joseph Simpson on 12th October 2007

Picture: Tango-Sierra on Flickr, via Creative commons license.

October 12, 2007 in Aviation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Boeing delays the Dreamliner

787

In a move that will surprise few who are close to the world of aviation, Boeing yesterday announced that deliveries of its revolutionary new aeroplane, the 787 Dreamliner, were to be delayed.

The delay is not that surprising, as rumours have abound that the plane - which features a brand new airframe, made up of composite materials - would enter service later than originally thought, mainly due to delays in the delivery and development process.

The plane is now scheduled to make its first test flight at the end of the first quarter in 2008, and will enter into service with launch customer, Japanese carrier ANA, in November or December 2008.

What's notable about this story is how, for the first time in this plane's development problems have been publicly announced. Up until now, the 787 has been continually feted, and has racked up more pre-orders than any commercial airliner ever, while over at Boeing's old adversary, Airbus, the plane it has been developing over a similar period - the A380, has been hit by problem after problem, causing long delivery delays, and has also struggled for sales.

With the A380 due to finally make it's first operational flight with Singapore airlines the week after next, one can't help but thinking that there might have been one or two smiles cracked in Toulouse on hearing this news.

More on this story here.

Related articles:
British Airways takes the plunge
Free flight - could it free air travel again?

Posted by Joseph Simpson on 11th October 2007

Photo credit : The Boeing company

October 11, 2007 in Aviation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

British Airways takes the plunge

Ba Having sat quietly (in public) on the Airbus A380 and Boeing 787 debate for a long time, British Airways has finally committed to $8 billion worth of new large airliners. It's ordered 12 A380s and 24 787s.

Financially this is clearly a very big deal but its significance goes much further.

The biggest news here is the A380 decision. Though BA finally became an Airbus customer in the late 80s, it's never before flown any wide body Airbus, famously ignoring (much to the irritation of the French, Germans and British Aerospace) the original A300 and then the A330 and A340 which went on to replace and extend Airbus's large and long haul product line.

Airbus selling some more A380s is fantastic news for the manufacturer, particularly as they will take over the role currently played by the most in-demand portion of BA's 747-400 fleet. BA has 57 of these, the largest 747-400 fleet in the world. The subtext here is that BA has chosen to go with A380s rather than Boeing's 747-8, a significant redesign of the 40 year old product that turned long haul travel from an exclusive to a mass exercise. Likely to enter service in 2009, the updated jumbo would have been a safe and quite reasonable decision for BA, and an evolution of its fleet. It now seems less likely (though not impossible) that British Airways will order more 747s, a plane it first introduced into service in its early form in 1971.

Scan20001 BA's long haul fleet has been dominated by the Boeing 747 for decades. This was early 80s BA. Vol au vent and a babycham anyone?

What we're finally seeing is endorsement of both manufacturers' arguments. Boeing has promoted the 787 by insisting that in future more flights will go long haul point to point - so from slightly smaller airports to either hubs or slightly smaller airports. Airbus has argued that congestion means bigger planes will be needed to fly between big hubs. It's been obvious for some time that the reality is a combination of the two trends.

For those interested in a bit of historical trivia, the deal represents a significant shift towards Airbus for the airline. In the days when Children Were Seen But Not Heard and National Airlines Bought Home-Grown Planes, the airline (and its forerunners BEA and BOAC) spent years trying to persuade the British government to let it buy American aircraft. Instead of getting its preferred Boeing 737s and 727s in the late sixties, it was forced to buy underpowered BAC One Elevens and the wonderful, but inefficient and underpowered Trident 3 (the airline's pilots use to joke the Trident only took off due to the curvature of the earth). It won out in 1978, buying 737s and became a launch airline for the 757 in '79, which replaced the Trident rather in the manner that a shotgun might replace a catapult.

By the 70s there weren't any British long haul airliners on sale, so a policy of mainly Boeing (from BOAC) plus Lockheed (from BEA) saw the fleet dominated by American hardware, and despite repeated attempts to sell the Airbus A300, via both patriotic guilt and economic arguments, it never happened.

It was only in 1987, when the airline bought British Caledonian, that it accidentally became an Airbus customer, inheriting that airline's launch order for the Airbus A320, which of course was quite the moderne thing to pick up at the time. Since then BA's A320 (and smaller A319 and larger A321) have gradually grown as a fleet to become BA's dominant short haul aircraft, with about 70 flying. Meanwhile 737 and 757 fleets have shrunk dramatically. The 757 is out of production (though quite a handy thing to have around because it has very flexible economics, being good at very short or very long sectors I believe). The 737 is being phased out of the fleet, probably in 2008.

The point here is that Airbus is on the ascendent in both the long and short haul BA fleets, with Boeing seeming to have no chance of grabbing any small airliner sales and the large and long haul fleet being a Boeing and Airbus mix for the first time ever.

One chance for Boeing might be to sell the 787-3, an intriguing short haul (but large) airliner prospect that Boeing has to date only sold to the Japanese. It's not clear today whether the deal includes any such variant, though it's unlikely given the announcement talking of the long-haul fleet. This product is Boeing's real game-changer and ironically picks up where the original Airbus A300 left off. The thinking in the late 60s and early 70s was that basic economics would mean we would increasingly fly relatively short distances in much larger aircraft - perhaps holding two or three hundred people. This happened for a bit, but over time the low cost revolution has led to lots more flights, all in relatively small A320s or 737s. The situation is most obvious in the United States. It was common in the 70s to fly New York to Los Angeles in a 747, but nowadays you'll probably find yourself in a JetBlue A320. Boeing argues that shifting back to bigger planes makes sense. It makes economic sense, it makes environmental sense and it tackles congestion. I think Boeing's right, but it might be ahead of the airlines here - and buying big planes is harder than buying small, especially in a credit crunch.

BA's new fleet will take some time to arrive, one of the downsides of sitting on the fence for so long while blaming the cabin crew. And there may be other moves to come, as this order only replaces 34 planes in a fleet of over 120 large jets. In the meantime, we can continue to feel its 747s get ever more elderly. Its first entered service 18 years ago.

Posted by Mark Charmer. Anyone wanting to read up on the aircraft manufacturer battle over the years should read John Newhouse's great book, Boeing Versus Airbus. Graziano Freschi's book on the BAC Three-Eleven, though badly structured, is a fascinating insight into the politics behind the development of the Airbus consortium, and the shift in European airliner leadership from the old 1960s UK centres of expertise to France and Germany, making Airbus what it is today.

September 27, 2007 in Analysis, Aviation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

"Taxi without turbines"

We mentioned some months back that Virgin Atlantic has been trialling some ways of getting its planes to the end of runways without needing the engines on, using tugs and adapting taxi patterns. Our experience of a typical 747 flight out of Heathrow is a ground taxi of anything between 15 and 40 minutes.

Well Delta Airlines has just made an interesting move to develop a 'WheelTug' system for its fleet of Boeing 737NG aircraft. If things go according to the press release, these will be in operation from late 2009.

wheeltug.gif This image gives an idea of what's going on, though WheelTug insists the final motor will be smaller, lighter and more directly integrated with the nose wheel structure


There's more on the technology here.

Posted by Mark Charmer on 2 April 2007.

April 02, 2007 in Aviation, Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

A week of climate change

Last week saw both of Britain's potential next prime-ministers vie for leadership on how the country tackles climate change. And it was fascinating.

How you interpret it depends on where you stand on a bunch of issues. The first is whether you believe climate change is actually a problem. The second is whether Britain can and should take a global leadership position both in setting targets and building a low-carbon economy. Another is whether you believe a process can get underway whereby consumers, businesses and politicians make the seismic changes happen that are needed to reduce carbon emissions massively over the coming decades. A fourth, more specific, question is whether we ignore or tackle emissions caused by air travel (and what we do).

Newspapers

And then there is the problem that whatever you think on these points as a citizen and a consumer might conflict with what you do for a living - how the issues above directly affect your ability to earn money.

Here is a rapid run down on what has happened.

First, Tory leader David Cameron put forward a proposal to scrap the existing system of air passenger duty and introduce a new 'per flight' tax. Clearly this was always going to be a hard sell, first leading to the usual unsurprising mix of reactions and ending up with the usual problem of everyone wondering what is and isn't necessary air travel.

Gordon Brown, Chancellor and Labour PM in waiting, then set out a vision based more on what could be done in the built environment, making homes and offices more efficient, neatly setting him and Cameron up for a week of green rivalry.

But the next day saw the big whammy... The government's draft climate change bill caused quite a stir. This was definitely more ambitious than most people expected and the government seems very serious about making it law. The basics were as follows:

1. A series of clear targets for reducing carbon dioxide emissions - including making the UK’s targets for a 60% reduction by 2050 and a 26 to 32% reduction by 2020 legally binding.

2. A new system of legally binding five year “carbon budgets”, set at least 15 years ahead, to provide clarity on the UK’s progress towards its key targets and increase the certainty that businesses and individuals need to invest in low-carbon technologies.

3. A new statutory body, the Committee on Climate Change, to provide independent expert advice and guidance to Government on achieving its targets and staying within its carbon budgets.

4. New powers to enable the Government to more easily implement policies to cut emissions.

5. A new system of annual open and transparent reporting to Parliament. The Committee on Climate Change will provide an independent progress report to which the Government must respond. "This will ensure the Government is held to account every year on its progress towards each five year carbon budget and the 2020 and 2050 targets."

6. A requirement for Government to report at least every five years on current and predicted impacts of climate change and on its proposals and policy for adapting to climate change.

Press coverage was amusing. Whereas left and right parties (or at least their leaders) don't differ too much on the basics - that climate change is happening and needs to be tackled - the left press (Guardian, Independent and The Mirror) welcomed the change and the right mainly derided it or couldn't decide.  The poor Daily Mail was left bereft, with all the elegance of an idiot standing in his back garden, shouting abuse at his neighbours.

The Daily Express led with the angle that "government snoops" would be coming into your home to check your lightbulbs. The 'Mail reported the move as a direct threat to "homeowners who refuse to make their properties energy efficient".

"Blair Gibbs, of the Taxpayers' Alliance, said: "It's bad enough that politicians want to take so much of our money away in tax. For them also to intrude into our homes in order to have the ability to penalise us even further is simply unacceptable.""

Slightly more pragmatic, The Daily Telegraph interpreted the whole thing with a "Businesses will be forced to curb emissions" tag.

Perhaps as evidence that the right are still struggling to judge the mood of the nation on climate change, The Sun has some subtly relaxed reports.

In the background throughout has been the spectre of a single documentary featured a week earlier on Channel 4, which threw doubt on most aspects of climate change science. Widely derided, it has nonetheless generated a conspiracy paranoia amongst some climate change doubters that is more reminiscent of America than Britain - apparently the scientists and politicans are all out to get us.

All sides started to identify examples of inconsistent policies and lack of joined up thinking. Organisations like the Institute of Directors got in on the act.

Miles Templeman, Director General of the Institute of Directors (IoD) said: "We agree with setting ambitious targets for cutting carbon emissions but we need to do this by encouraging new technologies and energy efficiency rather than extra costs which would make UK businesses less competitive. The price of a lower carbon economy should not be lower UK employment. "The danger here is that a disproportionate burden falls on business, when everyone should be making a contribution."

And the left press got back into activist mode, with the Indy ramping up its campaign to demonise air travel, alongside online Lufthansa adverts and beside a promotion for its supplement on fifty things to do in Ireland (presumably by boat).

"Next Tuesday, a British Airways 737 jet will begin taxi-ing on the runway at Gatwick airport in preparation for the short flight to Newquay in Cornwall. If BA bosses' ambitions are met, up to 140 passengers paying as little as £69 return could be kicking back in their seats ahead of the one-hour hop ahead of them. For green campaigners, Newquay represents a dangerous escalation in Britain's love affair with air travel and could signal one of the most significant battlegrounds in the increasingly bitter war between environmentalists and the airline industry."

Underneath all of this is one undeniable fact. If the rest of the world doesn't build on Britain's lead here, the entire plan is stuffed. The economy would be shackled and laws would be pretty quickly rewritten and reversed. I think that is what the doubters were trying to say, whether wrapped in xenophobia, not-in-my-backyard-ism or global conspiracy theory.

For the rest of us, who think it really could work, it opens up some fascinating opportunities.  One thing I can guarantee will continue to exist for the next 43 years is a vocal group of right wing press.  By 2050 Britain might have led a successful battle against climate change - but there will have been a fight every day, every week, every year, for the duration.

Posted by Mark Charmer on 22nd march 2007.

March 22, 2007 in Analysis, Aviation, Media insight, Sustainability | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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