Government faces criticism from its own advisors over failure to mention emissions targets as campaigners enter second week of hunger strike

The government is coming under growing pressure from environmentalists and its own advisers over its support for a new runway at Heathrow.

The Committee on Climate Change [CCC] has expressed its “surprise” that there was no mention of the government’s legal obligations to reduce greenhouse gases when it announced it was backing Heathrow expansion plans earlier this month.



And environmental campaigners have stepped up their activities with protesters spray-chalking SNP headquarters in Scotland and staging a “die-in” inside Westminster. Eight activists are set to enter their second week of a hunger-striker in protest at what they say would be an “environmentally catastrophic” decision.

Lord Deben and Baroness Brown of Cambridge, chair and deputy chair of the CCC, wrote to transport minister Chris Grayling on Thursday to remind him that the government has a “legally binding commitment to reduce greenhouse gas emissions under the Climate Change Act” and that it has “also committed, through the Paris agreement, to limit the rise in global temperature to well below 2C and to pursue efforts to limit it to 1.5C.”

The letter added: “We were surprised that your statement to the House of Commons on the National Policy Statement on 5 June 2018 made no mention of either of these commitments. It is essential that aviation’s place in the overall strategy for UK emissions reduction is considered and planned fully by your department.”

It said that although the committee, set up to advise the government on how best to tackle climate change, did not have a view on the location of airport capacity, aviation emissions must be “compatible with meeting the 2050 climate objectives”.

“Higher levels of aviation emissions in 2050 must not be planned for since this would place an unreasonably large burden on other sectors,” it added.

Environmentalists welcomed the intervention. Doug Parr, chief scientist for Greenpeace, said: “When the rest of the economy already has to cut emissions by over 80% to allow aviation to double theirs, any carbon overshoot from a new runway cannot be accommodated under the current targets, never mind the 1.5 degree limit proposed in Paris.

“The government’s climate advisors are understandably concerned that the government appears to be ducking this issue. We need to ditch the 20th-century mindset that sees the environment as a side issue and accept that the climate must be central to all government decision making.”

The letter comes as a group of activists, who have been on hunger strike since Saturday, staged a protest against the SNP, which is backing the expansion plans. The group spray-chalked messages on the walls of its Edinburgh HQ, reading “SNP bought by Heathrow” and “Voting for climate genocide”.

The activists, who also protested inside Westminster on Saturday, want the Labour Party and SNP to oppose the government’s plans when the vote comes before parliament sometime in the next few weeks.

One of those involved, Robin Boardman, a student from Bristol, said that although a week without food was beginning to take its toll, it was a proportionate response to a “reckless and criminal” decision.



“Hundreds of thousands of people are already dying globally because of climate change and that figure is only going to go up. We have known about this threat for many years but our politicians have proved themselves unable or unwilling to take effective action.

“In the context of this knowledge, to push ahead with this expansion will be viewed as nothing short of a criminal genocide by future generations.”