Take Action Now !!

I have just signed an online pledge stating my opposition to airport expansion and I thought if you are reading this you might like to sign up too. I hope you share my concerns about the impacts of flying and airport development. The government says it wants to take action against climate change but also plans to triple air travel - the most polluting of all forms of transport - over the next twenty five years. It wants to expand almost every airport in Britain and build huge new concrete runways across green fields at Stansted, Birmingham, Heathrow and Edinburgh. The communities around the airports will be blighted by noise and air pollution.

The government's own advisors - the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, the Environmental Audit Committee, and the Sustainable Development Commission - are all saying that this is a dangerous and destructive policy and still the government will not listen.

So I decided that I would make (another!!) personal stand and signed a public pledge to say that if the government refuses to back away from its expansion policy, I will take personal action to block airport expansion and to prevent companies from supporting and funding it. You can see my name and my personal statement at:

http://www.airportpledge.org.uk/read.php?entry=4271

The personal action can be anything you want it to be and the pledge will keep you informed of things you can do. But your first personal action can be to sign the pledge.

It's like a petition, but with the real threat that the people who sign it will be active and determined. The government is nervous of this kind of large scale opposition. The companies that fund and build the expansion are wary of this kind of risk to their investments. If we get enough people to join the pledge we can stop the airport expansion and force the government to adopt a transport policy which respects people and the environment.

So, please join me and sign the pledge. Go to www.airportpledge.org.uk and sign it now.

Babs x

p.s I could write about what I have been doing recently but really the main issue here is our planet and we have to think about it before ourselves sometimes (and more about me lounging on beaches and meeting cool people is probably not very interesting - especially to you people in the UK!x)