Plane Stupid turns Southampton Airport into climate refugee camp

17th Jan­u­ary: A group of activists from local anti-avi­a­tion group Plane Stu­pid Southamp­ton have just chained them­selves to the entrance of Southamp­ton air­port and erect­ed tents at the main entrance in a bid turn the region­al air­port into a cli­mate refugee camp. In addi­tion to set­ting up camp today, activists have for­mal­ly sub­mit­ted a plan­ning appli­ca­tion with East­leigh Bor­ough Coun­cil to turn the air­port into refugee hous­ing.

The planned expan­sion of Southamp­ton air­port, along with 34 oth­er region­al air­ports in the UK, will do enough dam­age to the cli­mate to force an esti­mat­ed 1.3 mil­lion peo­ple in impov­er­ished parts of the world to flee rais­ing sea lev­els, flood­ing, drought and famine.

Increased fly­ing is one of the main cul­prits of cli­mate change. While the gov­ern­ment has com­mit­ted the UK to reduc­ing CO2 emis­sions by 80% by 2050, the expand­ing avi­a­tion indus­try alone would destroy any hope of hit­ting this tar­get. BAA hopes to increase pas­sen­ger traf­fic for Southamp­ton Air­port form 1.5 mil­lion pas­sen­gers a year to 3 mil­lion by 2015.

In order to get fly­ing under con­trol, the gov­ern­ment needs to halt all air­port expan­sion, and encour­age peo­ple to take the train. Train jour­neys are ten times less dam­ag­ing to the cli­mate, and Southamp­ton has excel­lent rail links to the rest of the UK, mak­ing fly­ing unnec­es­sary.

“Peo­ple in the UK fly more per capi­ta than any­one else, so the UK avi­a­tion indus­try has the great­est respon­si­bil­i­ty for the con­se­quences of cli­mate change. It makes per­fect sense for Southamp­ton to take on the bur­den of hous­ing some of the world’s cli­mate refugees”, said Pete Bark­er of Plane Stu­pid. “It’s crazy to imag­ine that we can tack­le the seri­ous threat posed by run­away cli­mate change whilst still allow­ing air­ports to expand.”

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