 Aviation experts, engineers and the construction industry in UK may be supporting the expansion of Heathrow airport for economic development but over 100 MPs, cabinet ministers and environmentalists are considering this move critical for global climate change. If experts are to be believed, the environment and carbon cost of building the third runway will add up to the enormity of global warming.
On paper, the climate change cost associated with the runway project has been predicted to be approximately 4.8 billion pounds. Even though the economic benefit from the third runway is expected to be between 4.4 to 5.2 billion pounds, Liberal Democrats have analyzed the rise in environmental damage to be 9.3 billion. This analysis was carried out on the basis of the cost of CO2 guidelines recently published by the government.
Do these figures demonstrate the government's ignorance towards the global issue of rising carbon footprint? According to analysts and scientists, the UK aviation industry will expand from 480,000 flights to 702,000 flights per year with the new runway but this project will also damage Britain's commitment of reducing the emission of green house gases by 2050 by 80%. Supporters of runway claim that the powerful jet engines, changes in the procedure of aviation control and use of light materials will control the emissions and curtail the use of fuel in the coming years. Presently, aircrafts fly into land on long and the low trajectories consume a lot of fuel. But with the change in aviation procedures, routes can be rationalized in order to make sure that flights fly in energy efficient straight lines and save more fuel. Since each take-off and landing slot is important and planes wait with running engines to get one, all this time the aircraft continues to emit carbon in the air. Runway supporters feel that a third runway will result in less congestion which means less carbon emission. Critics consider this as an impressive technology package but they continue to suspect whether or not this will make things work.
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