Montag, 25. Februar 2008

Protest back at Heathrow - great!

I haven't flown since Bali. Which has been nice: Nice to the body, nice to the body clock, nice to the climate. But this year, as always, flying will be the achilles heel of my personal attempts at not living a genocidal 'lifestyle'. Whatever the reason I will board planes for, my flying habit will remain deeply unjust. Put simply: Even the CO2 emitted on the way to climate negotiations, like the upcoming ones in Bangkok, kills. - But though I fully accept that flying is hypocritical, I do not agree that because I am a hypocrite, I have to accept that nothing can be done about aviation growth. To the contrary. That there are 32 flights between Heathrow and Manchester every day, for example, is such lunacy, that even those who will never accept that flying is evil might be persuaded that this must stop in an age of dangerous climate change. That the most frequent destination from Heathrow is Paris is simply flabbergasting. Have none of these people ever tried Eurostar and experienced the joy of arriving, stress-free, in the city centre? - All of which is to say, that I salute my colleagues at Heathrow. They climbed a plane today. But from the outside. Sitting on the wing, they reminded us all, that we are not facing a small little crisis. We are facing a climate emergency! Nothing less.

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