Praise from the Bristol Cabinet's Environment Spokesman

Thanks for letter of support, councillor

The above is the title of a letter in the Bristol Evening Post from Knowle's Lib-Dem Councillor Gary Hopkins, who speaks on environmental issues and other matters for the Bristol Cabinet. His letter goes on to say:

'I WELCOME the letter of support from green candidate Glenn Vowles ("Recycling is not to blame for rat boom", Open Lines, December 13)...It is good to see that at last an opposition politician is responsible.'

The way politics is conducted is very important. Its often conducted in such an apalling, negative, irrational and point-scoring way, with criticism for the sake just of criticism. Many people are put off by this and dont bother to vote and/or develop a view of politics and politicians as the lowest of the low.

I believe in applying ethical standards across the whole of life and when campaigning politically feel that it should be done ethically. I was very happy to support Councillor Hopkins on the issue of recycling and the rat boom because he is right on this one and had been very unfairly criticised over several days in the press. By supporting him on this issue I was also defending recycling.

He should be in no doubt though that I am very critical of the general Lib-Dem stance on a very large number of issues, not least the appalling state of public transport in Bristol which is ruining the quality of out lives and giving us very poor air quality. And of course Councillor Hopkins is in the Cabinet that took the decision to close Jubilee Swimming Pool, despite the fact that his election address said he would fight all plans to close it.

Expanding airport would destroy efforts to fight climate change

It is my view that the proposed expansion of Bristol Airport, doubling passenger numbers by 2015 and then trebling them by 2030, along with the readiness of BIA (Bristol International Airport) to fund the building of new roads linking the airport to the motorway and the South Bristol ring road, will destroy any other efforts made by people in the region to reduce the use of fossil fuels and fight climate change. Currently the airport is responsible for much more fossil fuel use than all the traffic in Bristol according to their own figures.

Aviation is the fastest growing source of greenhouse gas emissions and it has now been acknowledged by the recent Stern Report that climate change is the gravest threat to global prosperity. The costs of UK aviation’s contribution to climate change has been estimated at well over £2 billion. The health costs of the UK aviation sector’s air pollution amount to over a billion pounds per year. We cannot expect to start tackling climate change and expand airports. Models of development strongly featuring road and air travel growth are increasingly discredited, not least by climate change, and are not genuine development ie change for the better.

BIA state that ‘climate change is a global issue and action is needed at national and international level’. It makes no mention of changes being needed at regional, local and personal levels. If we are to tackle climate change action is needed at all levels. If individuals, local councils, businesses and regions are not playing their part then achieving change and tackling the problem at national and international levels will be very difficult indeed. We cannot say that that the solution to climate change is only for national and international level action, since we all make decisions every day which impact on our climate.

It is my view that BIA are not fully and properly assessing the total impact of what they are proposing. I do not go along with BIA’s assumption that actual and projected trends in flying are a good thing. Such trends must be subject to change and shaping by debate in society and should not simply be accepted. In my view it is both desirable and necessary to change the trend of expanding airports and increasing flying. It will soon become inevitable to do so, if we are to have a lifestyle we are able to sustain. The coming decades, the very ones in which BIA are proposing to expand their operation, are critical ones if climate change is to be addressed at all levels.

Airport expansion as a means of employment generation, stressed in parts of the BIA expansion plan, is extremely inefficient, both in terms of per pound spent and per unit of carbon generated by the work. We need development that breaks the link between the growth of the economy and growth in carbon generation. The overall hidden economic costs of the EU’s aviation sector have been estimated at over £14 billion a year, with the UK accounting for £4billion. References to the business community making it clear that they see the development of BIA as vital to regional economic growth are somewhat sweeping in our view. There are many businesses, not least those in the region’s tourist industry, who will want people to spend their money here rather than flying abroad and spending it there. Most of the growth in flights are tourists taking their money with them. We know from Treasury figures that air passenger transport represents a drain on the UK balance of payments of billions each year, and this figure does not include the costs of importing fuel and aircraft.

I'm not convinced by BIA’s stated commitment to ‘continued investment in the sustainable development of the airport’. I cannot see how an airport can develop sustainably, given the science and economics of climate change. At best it can only continue to try to become less unsustainable. Continued growth in air travel will easily outweigh any gains due to transfer of airport use from outside the region to inside it, greater use of public transport to get to the airport and other relatively small scale and possibly token attempts at being more environmentally friendly in building design and operation. The proposed use of renewable energy and fuel sources, energy saving in buildings and services and improvements to aircraft operational procedures are welcome as far as they go but they are far from focussed on the main airport environmental impact – energy use from flying planes.

What is effective in serious moves towards a sustainable society is to correctly prioritise the significant and fastest growing impacts and then effectively tackle these first. This puts air travel very high up the list. Expanding airports takes us in the wrong direction since far from countering growth in carbon output it encourages it very efficiently and rapidly.

With current technology there is no such thing as sustainable aviation. Aviation’s contribution to climate change is far from small in absolute terms. Even a regional airport like Bristol International has environmental impacts at the level of a city. BIA’s own figures for percentage of total regional greenhouse gas emissions from their operation show an increase from 0.4% to 0.7% as a result of their plans, an increase in contribution of 75%.

The proposed rise in flight frequency from 11 take offs/landings per hour to 17 represents an increase of 55%, with a corresponding increase in the frequency of a noise event occurring. I take no comfort at all from BIA’s statement that ‘measures proposed to manage aircraft noise will ensure that the number of people affected will remain broadly as the present day’ to say the least, given the health costs to those affected The economic costs of UK aircraft noise is already over £300 million. Note that we are strongly sympathetic to those who want noise pollution assessed in a different way.

BIA has not been consistent with its pronouncements on roads in the airport area. MD Andrew Skipp said at the launch of the airport expansion plan that roads in the area could handle the extra passengers. Yet in the local press he also said ‘Clearly the current transport arrangements south of Bristol need improvement..’ and spoke of the need to address traffic flow and congestion through Barrow Gurney. This is most confusing and does not add to the confidence I have in BIA.

Recycling not responsible for more rats in Bristol

Despite the fact that I am a political opponent of Knowle Councillor Gary Hopkins, I have to say that on the issue of Bristol's increasing rat population he is absolutely right. The criticism on increasing rats being due to the new recycling system has little foundation.

The increase in rats, which is a real one, is mostly down to the warm Summer and Autumn, according to reports from the pest control industry. This has boosted their breeding success and also made them more visible when they seek out water every day. It is a national trend and includes a very large number of areas where there has been no new recycling system introduced.

There might possibly be a small contribution from additional, highly irresponsible and of course illegal, fly tipping after the introduction of the new recycling system. Similarly slightly more uncollected material due to people being unwilling or unable to cooperate or respond correctly to the new system may contribute a little to the problem. Heightened awareness of waste and the public debate on rats may also lead more people to report rat issues.

Of course urban rats thrive when people are irresponsible with their waste eg through littering and provide rats with plenty of food!

Credit where credit is due, Councillor Hopkins has overseen the introduction of system which has very significantly boosted Bristol's recycling rate and cut some environmental impacts as a result. Its not a perfect system and the city still has some way to go to match the very high recycling rates found in other European cities but we should all be pleased that we have made a big improvement and are finally heading in the right direction.

Expensive nukes dont make us secure

It is wrong for the Government to spend £15 to £20 billion on new nuclear submarines to carry Trident nuclear missiles not least because the spending simply is not focussed on real threats to the security of our society. Securing sufficient, clean, green energy supplies, global terrorism and organised crime, climate change and a number of other issues all clearly represent security threats that we know will be ongoing for some time but investing in new nuclear submarines tackles none of these. Kingswood MP Roger Berry may not be my preferred political colour (Green) but he is right to say, 'Today's security threat is not one that can be met by nuclear weapons' ('Blair faces fight over new nukes', Bristol Evening Post, December 5).

This is not the only sense in which the £20 billion (more like £70 billion if one adds up the weapons and submarine lifetime expenditure) will be misused. At todays costs £20 billion would be enough to build 800 new schools, and who would say they aren't needed. It could pay for the protection of over 700 million acres of rainforest, or meet our UN Millenium Goal aid target of 0.7% of GDP every year for the next eight years, thus fighting global poverty which will add to our insecurity if not tackled ! There are many other life and security enhancing ways to spend the money.

Just think of what could be done to enhance state pensions or improve care for the elderly or improve aspects of the NHS with the billions to be spent on nuclear submarines armed with nuclear weapons. And lets not forget that the Germans, Italians, Spanish, Danish, Swedish and others in Europe and around the world do not feel they have to spend billions on nuclear weapons to make them more secure - so why do we?

Bristol North West MP Doug Naysmith is no Green but he is in tune with what will make us more secure when he said, 'We should be reducing nuclear arsenals, not increasing them.' ('Blair faces fight over new nukes', Bristol Evening Post, December 5). He is right because by not reducing nuclear weapons significantly, an aspiration of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty signed decades ago, we have sent out the message to countries who have since developed nuclear weapons, like India, Pakistan, North Korea and possibly others, that possession and threatened use of nuclear weapons is a necessary and acceptable part of being a secure state. The resulting higher risk of wider availability of nuclear material may well enhance the ability of terrorists to terrorise on a larger scale, with 'dirty' bombs containing such material.

I'm glad that a number of MPs will oppose the Government, though I note that former radical left-winger, now Bristol South MP, Dawn Primarolo wont be among them. Tony Blair is likely to win the vote on this, most likely with Conservative support too. The Government have not and wont now be leading the world in nuclear disarmament. The destructive capacity they have decided to retain is equivalent to 1000 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. Why on Earth is such a massive capacity to indiscriminately annihilate needed? How can the Labour Government, or the Conservative and Lib-Dem opposition who also want a large nuclear arsenal, ever be considered Green if they favour 'defence' by threatening to destroy life on a mass scale?