Greenpeace targets UK airports with climate ticket exchanges
Greenpeace targets UK airports with climate ticket exchanges
pilots urged them to stop feeling guilty) by setting up booths at London City,
Manchester, Newcastle and Edinburgh airports on Tuesday where travellers on British
Airways domestic flights could swap the return section of their plane ticket for
a train ticket.
Posing as airline staff, the activists offered to swap British Airways tickets
for return rail tickets to London a ‘climate ticket exchange’ and used a loudspeaker
to complain about the nation’s ‘binge-flying’. They were targeting domestic plane
journeys in particular, which they say could easily be switched to trains which
emit less climate-warming CO2. “By aggressively promoting domestic routes, British
Airways is fuelling the binge-flying culture,” said Greenpeace director John Sauven
at London City airport. “Planes are 10 times more damaging to the climate than
trains, so if we don’t do something about the growth in aviation, Britain will
find it very hard to meet its global warming targets,” he added. BA countered
that it had led the industry over the last eight years in promoting carbon trading
to limit aviation’s impact on the environment. Greenpeace’s action comes the
day after the British Air Line Pilots Association published a report saying air
travel had become a scapegoat for global warming and air passengers should stop
feeling guilty. The ticket exchange booths were staffed by Greenpeace pilots
and stewardesses who chatted to the public about how BA is helping to promote
binge-flying and pressing the government for more runways and bigger airports.
(Planet Ark, Manchester Evening News, and others 19.6.2007)
for return rail tickets to London a ‘climate ticket exchange’ and used a loudspeaker
to complain about the nation’s ‘binge-flying’. They were targeting domestic plane
journeys in particular, which they say could easily be switched to trains which
emit less climate-warming CO2. “By aggressively promoting domestic routes, British
Airways is fuelling the binge-flying culture,” said Greenpeace director John Sauven
at London City airport. “Planes are 10 times more damaging to the climate than
trains, so if we don’t do something about the growth in aviation, Britain will
find it very hard to meet its global warming targets,” he added. BA countered
that it had led the industry over the last eight years in promoting carbon trading
to limit aviation’s impact on the environment. Greenpeace’s action comes the
day after the British Air Line Pilots Association published a report saying air
travel had become a scapegoat for global warming and air passengers should stop
feeling guilty. The ticket exchange booths were staffed by Greenpeace pilots
and stewardesses who chatted to the public about how BA is helping to promote
binge-flying and pressing the government for more runways and bigger airports.
(Planet Ark, Manchester Evening News, and others 19.6.2007)
