Her talking points:

• This is an emergency.
• People are already suffering and dying from it.
• It will get worse.
• Politicians, the media and those in power are ignoring the emergency
• Elected officials make words and promises but do nothing.
• I will not be silenced while the world is on fire, will you?
• We must be the adults in the room since world leaders behave like children.
• Thanks to climate activists Bristol Airport will not be expanded.
• Activism works, so I’m telling you to act.
• We will not back down from people in power who betray and fail us.
• We are the change that is coming whether you like it or not.

via Science Matters

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February 28, 2020 at 08:19AM

What’s stopping this third runway therefore is not the courts – it’s the government itself which, as a result of the environmental derangement to which it has fallen victim, is now skidding off the runway of reason altogether.

The Court of Appeal’s ruling over Heathrow airport’s mooted third runway has reignited in some quarters the already highly combustible fury in Britain over judicial activism.

The court has ruled that it was unlawful for the government to have given its approval to the construction of a third runway at Heathrow without taking into account its own obligations under the Paris agreement to reduce carbon emissions to net-zero by 2050.

Cue outrage from commentators who believe that, without a third runway to expand Heathrow, the UK will gravely damage its standing as a global commercial hub. They perceive this to be yet another example of the judges muscling into a public policy issue which should more properly be decided by MPs – and giving victory to Luddite green campaigners to boot.

As readers may know, I have been banging on for years about overreaching judges straying inappropriately and dangerously into the political arena. And as I wrote here only last week, my view of the carbon net-zero policy is that the governing class has taken leave of its senses altogether.

But leaving aside the question of whether a third runway at Heathrow is desirable or not, the court’s critics have got this one wrong. The people to blame are not the judges, but the politicians who created the law they themselves were breaking.

As ever, it’s worth reading what the judges actually said; which you can do at this link to the full judgment, and at this one to the summary.

The ruling was made solely on the grounds that, in approving a third runway through the Airports National Policy Statement (ANPS), the government had broken its own legal commitments:

“…in particular, the provision in section 5(8) of the Planning Act, which requires that the reasons for the policy set out in the ANPS ‘must… include an explanation of how the policy set out in the statement takes account of Government policy relating to the mitigation of, and adaptation to, climate change’. We have concluded, in particular, that the designation of the ANPS was unlawful by reason of a failure to take into account the Government’s commitment to the provisions of the Paris Agreement on climate change, concluded in December 2015 and ratified by theUnited Kingdom in November 2016”.

What is noticeable is the extreme care the court has taken to emphasise the narrow legal grounds for its decision. The judges said:

“We have made it clear that we are not concerned in these proceedings with the political debate and controversy to which the prospect of a third runway being constructed at Heathrow has given rise. That is none of the court’s business. We have emphasized that the basic question before us in these claims is an entirely legal question. We are required – and only required – to determine whether the Divisional Court was wrong to conclude that the ANPS was produced lawfully.

“Our task therefore – and our decision – does not touch the substance of the policy embodied in the ANPS. In particular, our decision is not concerned with the merits of expanding Heathrow by adding a third runway, or of any alternative project, or of doing nothing at all to increase the United Kingdom’s aviation capacity. Those matters are the Government’s responsibility and the Government’s alone”.

The judges also stated that their ruling did not stop the government from proceeding with a third runway plan. It just had to bring it into line with its own legal obligations under the Planning Act and the Paris agreement. The court said:

“Our decision should be properly understood. We have not decided, and could not decide, that there will be no third runway at Heathrow. We have not found that a national policy statement supporting this project is necessarily incompatible with the United Kingdom’s commitment to reducing carbon emissions and mitigating climate change under the Paris Agreement, or with any other policy the Government may adopt or international obligation it may undertake. The consequence of our decision is that the Government will now have the opportunity to reconsider the ANPS in accordance with the clear statutory requirements that Parliament has imposed”.

In other words, the court didn’t even say the runway decision must conform to climate change policy — merely that the government must explain just how it is taking that policy into account.

Full post

The post Melanie Phillips: It’s Ministers Not Judges Who Are Skidding Off The Policy Runway appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

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February 28, 2020 at 06:19AM

Neil Levy of the Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics, University of Oxford, has a new article at the Conversation crossposted at the Oxford School of Practical Ethics blog here.

We’ve met Neil Levy and his views on climate catastrophe before. Paul, in this post drew our attention to this article at the Conversation crossposted at the Oxford Ethics blog here about climate sceptics, or deniers, as he prefers to call us.

An extremely lively discussion ensued under the article at the Oxford Ethics blog, involving me, Paul, Ben Barry, Jaime, Ian Woolley John Shade, ATT Physics and others, during which two things happened:

1) Neil Levy withdrew from the debate halfway through, with the comment:

I will leave you guys to play by yourselves now. I will only respond if someone has a substantive point to make (where asserting that I’m wrong, or stupid, or playing gotcha don’t count as substantive, by my lights). Have fun.

2) The blog site went down due to “technical problems” and remained down for five months. No explanation was given, and the opening post five months later was yet another climate sceptic-related one by Dr Levy, quoting Dan Kahan in support of the statement that “… Sceptics are not less intelligent or less knowledgeable.” Thanks for that Neil. I suspect that what happened during those five months while the blog owners were busy with their soldering irons was a lively debate at the Centre of Ethics about the ethics of allowing or not the comments to stay up. We won.

In his new article: “Climate change: How do I cope with inevitable decline?” Neil Levy starts with a quote from Paul, 42, London who is moved by watching an interview with David Attenborough to say: “It seems to me that this is the first time in history we have known things will get worse for the foreseeable future. How do you live in the shadow of such rapid and inevitable decline? And how can you cope with the guilt?”

Neil Levy agrees with Paul, 42, adding:

Never before have we known that the deterioration of not just our countries, but our entire planet, will continue for the foreseeable future – no matter what we do...We can’t hide from the fact that Attenborough’s opinion reflects mainstream science .”

This last, utterly false claim is backed up by a link to this article by Professor Lewandowsky, which dates from 2013 and is about the conspiracy theorising of us sceptics, and has absolutely nothing to do with whether future decline is inevitable.

Our debate with Neil Levy under his previous article centred around his belief that non-experts have a moral duty to accept the belief of experts, a belief that he was unable to defend. And among the experts we were expected to bow down to were Cook and Lewandowsky, which resulted in the shortcomings of these two experts being laid out in some detail in comments. It is extraordinary that Levy should come back, citing the same expert, in another, utterly indefensible article about how to cope with something that doesn’t exist, and for which Levy provides no evidence at all accept the belief of Paul, 24.

Neil Levy is an expert in philosophy – not climate science – in particular ethics, or moral philosophy, a subject which has its basis in the dialogues of Socrates, who prided himself in being a non-expert. I intend to discuss his latest article in comments at the Oxford Practical Ethics blog, and recommend others to join in.

via Climate Scepticism

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February 28, 2020 at 06:18AM

Dozens of airport, road and energy projects have been thrown into doubt after judges delivered a crushing blow to plans for a third runway at Heathrow over its impact on the environment.

The Court of Appeal ruled yesterday that the government’s policy on expanding the airport was unlawful because ministers had failed to take proper account of how it affected Britain’s climate commitments.

A refusal to properly consider the UN Paris agreement, which limits rises in global temperatures, when approving the third runway was “legally fatal”, the judges said.

The government said it would accept the ruling, striking a severe blow to plans for the runway.

Environmental groups and lawyers heralded the verdict as a milestone in the development of huge infrastructure projects, saying it had “wider implications for keeping climate change at the heart of all planning decisions”.

It could open the door to a series of challenges against plans for roads, the expansion of other airports, gas-fired power stations and coalmines on the grounds that they too are inconsistent with the legally binding climate change commitments.

The Heathrow decision could also have a big impact on plans for the budget next month, which is being billed in Whitehall as an infrastructure budget. The Conservatives are preparing to spend £100 billion over the next five years on building programmes.

Friends of the Earth said the ruling could lead to successful legal challenges on climate change grounds against plans to expand Gatwick, Birmingham, Manchester, Bristol, Leeds Bradford, Southampton and Bournemouth airports. It warned that big road projects could be challenged on the same grounds, including plans for a route between Oxford and Cambridge, the A303 Stonehenge tunnel and the Lower Thames Crossing, a 14-mile motorway and tunnel to the east of the Dartford Crossing that is the biggest scheme of its kind in decades. It may even raise questions over HS2, which has been criticised over the damage it will cause to ancient woodland.

Full story (£)

The post Britain’s Economy On The Brink As Climate Lawfare Threatens Infrastructure Projects appeared first on The Global Warming Policy Forum (GWPF).

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February 28, 2020 at 05:40AM