Around 40 or so people protested outside the entrance to Lydd Airport on Romney Marsh today. The demo had been called by a new coalition in the area - Keep The Marsh Special Alliance- to help raise awareness of the grave dangers to the local environment and the wider threat to climate change from continued airport expansion projects such as Lydd.

Vehicles passing were around 2.5 to 1 in support of the anti airport demo.

(A mere 'clack' of 10 or so assembled opposite to feebly support the airport.)

People from the local area along with members of the Shepway FoE, Kent and Shepway Greens and Shepway Lib Dems joined coalition partners Lydd Airport-No Expansion in a noisy and colourful demo with a variety of banners.

Anyone looking in on the BBC South East region (esp Kent). There should be a report on the local prog at around 5.30pm (after the footie results/Main news) tonight.
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In brief response to posts under the demo alert posted on the 25th Aug

There is a great deal of already established evidence of the damage to the climate from air travel. It is ranked second only to car emissions as a producer of excess CO2.

The arguments that this airport would help relieve congestion elsewhere are absurd given that EU Jet collapsed at Manston and people are increasingly taking the Eurostar to Europe ( takes nearly two thirds of people to the EU etc and is set to increase as/when the new CTRL link is finished) That's how people can travel instead of by polluting air.

Despite so called Gov statements about any 'need', it really is a non starter for any further air expansion. The very latest evidence on global warming has climate scientists revising their figures on temp levels and sea level rises both upwards and sooner. It is increasingly urgent that strong action against those factors that contribute to it are curtailled NOW.
Romney Marsh is very likely to start flooding far sooner than most think.

Further the ever rising price of oil and the eventual need to tax aviation fuel and other parts of the industry make the economics unviable- espcially for anyone trying to invest and or expand. The person who bought Lydd Airport is very likely to find it becomes a millstone if he keeps trying to get it expanded and maybe even kept at or near present levels.

Kent County Council has already thrown out the idea of an increase to 2 mill passengers a year as again unlikely and unviable.

Alternative employment on Romney could easilly come from improving tourism to the area (which would be driven away by noise from aircraft), Possibly making microgeneration units at a factory on the old Dungeness N power stn. biocrops , cottage hospitals and many other ideas that have and are being advanced.
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www.lyddairport-noexpansion.co.uk

see also (for general info)
www.foe.org.uk

and

www.airportpledge.org.uk
(the campaign alliance against UK airport/transport expansion- FoE/Greenpeace/People&Planet/Transport2000/RisingTide).

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