Social inequalities and aviation
The social inequality of airport expansion
Aviation is not just an environmental issue. Just like almost all environmental issues there are many social inequalities surrounding aviation induced emissions and pollution. Only 2- 3% of the global population participate in international air travel. In the UK the richest 5th of the population take half of all flights, while the poorer half take only a fifth. The UK taxpayer even subsidises the aviation industry by around £9 billion per year in fuel tax exemptions, while the poorest in the UK can’t even afford to heat their homes due to high fuel prices. Aviation benefits the very wealthiest the most, while the least well off pay disproportionately. On top of all that, airports are generally located in low income areas so it is those who benefit the least from flying who suffer the noise, health effects and pollution planes produce.
The New Economics Foundation report ‘Plane Truths’ outlines the many social inequalities associated with flying and airport expansion.
“The advent of no-frills carriers does not appear to have had a notable impact in terms of the income profile of passengers. In fact, the profile of UK leisure passengers is similar between no-frills carriers and full-service carriers, and has changed little over the last decade, and although numbers of leisure passengers from all income groups has increased, the majority of the absolute increase has come from those in higher and middle income and socio-economic groups” Civil Aviation Authority, from the Plane Truths report.
Local resident disturbed by airport noise
Sustainable Jobs for our future
All too often you hear someone say: “aviation expansion means more jobs”. A new report from the Campaign against Climate Change ‘One Million Jobs Now‘, provides the answer. It shows how over 1,000,000 jobs could be created in ‘climate jobs’.
These jobs would directly help to reduce the amount of greenhouse gases we’re putting into the air – unlike the ‘green jobs’ the Government keeps supporting. The report suggests that new jobs could be created in all areas – including those in sustainable energies, homes and buildings and transport.
Providing this many new jobs is vital to tackling climate change and providing a transition for workers employed in polluting industries. It would also assist the two and a half million people currently unemployed in the UK. The report demonstrates how over half those people could be re-employed in new ‘climate jobs’.
The report was partly inspired by the Vestas struggle, where a group of un-unionised workers on the Isle of Wight were given their marching orders when a factory manufacturing wind turbines was shut down. Work in sectors like the aviation industry is notoriously precarious, with boom and bust cycles creating little job security. The report argues for Government investment in genuinely sustainable employment, for work which will continue to be useful; regardless of the vagaries of the market.
This document is hugely important to climate change activists. It helps to highlight the compatibility of workers and climate activist’s struggles and so helps to cement a crucial relationship in the fight against unsustainable capitalism and climate change.
“I first made these links between our sick houses, our sick children and the sickness of the planet away back in the 198O’s. Our ten year campaign resulted in our solar housing project completed in 1992. It demonstrated a fifteen % reduction in C02 0mmission – evidence that when the people at the grassroots actually get listened too, then the benefits go far beyond our own social and economic environment. I have been working to support this young generation of campaigners because my journey over the world in search of answers to the ‘insanity’ of our lived reality has convinced me; that for the very first time in the history of human ecology that our children could be the first generation to be denied a future. It really scares me that these brave young people could end up in jail because they want to try and save our planet and its people. The trial also has serious implications for other peaceful and non-violent campaigners who seem to now be regarded as terrorist. In my view it is not the Climate9 who should be on trial but all of us. Either through ‘commission’ or ‘omission’ we are all guilty of playing our part in the destruction of our planet and its people. ”
Cathy McCormack, author of ‘the wee yellow butterfly’.
