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Heathrow Airport’s £14bn expansion is set to be revived, with the Supreme Court expected to overturn a Court of Appeal ruling which blocked the project on environmental grounds.
The official judgement is due to be published later this morning.
However, a lawyer for charity Plan B Earth - which opposed the expansion on environmental grounds – has revealed the verdict early in protest at its “deep immorality”.
In a written statement, Tim Crosland said: “I have taken the decision to break the embargo on that decision as an act of civil disobedience. This will be treated as a ‘contempt of court’ and I am ready to face the consequences.”
Plans for the expansion were initially blocked in the Court of Appeal in February, with the court ruling that the government's Airports National Policy Statement (ANPS) was unlawful as it did not take into account UK climate change commitments under the 2016 Paris Agreement.
HAL then argued the case in the Supreme Court in October, claiming that policy arising from the agreement had not developed enough to allow for anything more than a “formulaic” reference in the ANPS.
However, Crosland and lawyers for another environmental charity Friends of the Earth said that carbon reduction targets in the agreement "needed to be taken into account".
In his statement yesterday, Crosland emphasised that when former transport secretary Chris Grayling approved the expansion in June 2018, he assessed its climate impact against the “historic" temperature limit of 2˚C warming, rather than the 1.5˚C temperature goal in the Paris Agreement.
“Had he assessed Heathrow expansion against the 1.5˚C temperature goal in the Paris Agreement, he could not have approved it,” Crosland said.
“Mr Grayling’s hidden reliance upon the discredited, dangerous 2˚C limit to support his plans was a treasonous betrayal of the young people of this country and made a mockery of the government’s commitment to showing international leadership in the face of the climate emergency, which our parliament and the UN Secretary General have declared.”
The detail of the Supreme Court verdict is not yet known.
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Heathrow should put its expansion plans on hold and devote its resources to developing hydrogen and other clean fuels for aircraft. When aircraft can fly cleanly, there might be the demand to justify the third runway – but this can be reviewed when the happy day of clean flights is with us.
Rodney Bridle (F)
rodney.bridle@damsafety.co.uk