What is Airplot?
Update May 13 2010: We've won - new government cancels Heathrow 3rd runway project!
The government plans to go ahead with airport expansion across the country even though this means we'll have no hope of meeting our climate emission targets. At full capacity, Heathrow would become the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions in the whole country. We can't let this happen if we are serious about tackling climate change.
We've bought the plot at Heathrow to make sure that climate change cannot be ignored. We will challenge the proposals every step of the way - building a strong community to oppose the runway, creating a legal block against any planning applications or attempts to buy the land, and if necessary physically blocking construction - standing with the people of Sipson, whose 700 homes would be flattened to build the runway, to stop the bulldozers.
We have four legal owners on the deeds: Greenpeace UK, Oscar winning actress Emma Thompson, comedian Alistair McGowan and prospective Tory parliamentary candidate Zac Goldsmith. That's the maximum number of owners we can put on the deeds, but over the past year thousands of supporters have signed up to become beneficial owners and stand beside us to resist all attempts to build the runway.
What's the Plan?
Over the coming months and years we'll be depending on our strong community of Airplotters to put pressure on MPs, write letters to local media, join us at events, tell friends and come up with ideas to make sure that everyone in the country knows that we must stop airport expansion if we are going to stop runaway climate change. You can see the sort of things we've got in mind by checking out the Airplotters' Toolkit. We want to put as many obstacles in the path of the third runway as possible - one of our latest ideas is a competition to come up with a design to fortify the Airplot so that, if the police and the bulldozers come to turf us out, we'll still be able to physically block the construction.
In truth the government has few allies outside the aviation industry on this issue. The economic benefits from Heathrow have been completely overstated by the government - only 4% of businesses feel an expanded Heathrow would be good for them, and the runway would lead to billions of pounds of climate damages. The government's former Chief Scientific Adviser Sir David King, the head of the environment agency, Chris Smith, cabinet ministers Ed Miliband and Hillary Benn, all major opposition parties, and an increasing number of Labour MPs have all spoken out against the plans to build a third runway at Heathrow.
How you can help
We are no longer recruiting new beneficial owners, as the Deed of Trust which formalised ownership of the Airplot has now been signed, and no new names can be added. But you can still be part of the battle to stop airport expansion by signing up to our regular e-bulletin.