Environmental lobby group accused of 'eco-snobbery'
A LEADING environmental lobby group was accused last night of “eco-snobbery” and “rank hypocrisy” after it refused to let an airport operator join its carbon reduction campaign.
The group, 10:10, which encourages homes and businesses to cut emissions by 10 per cent by 2010, blocked a membership application by Manchester Airport bosses who had pledged to meet the group’s targets.
The operator, which also runs East Midlands, Humberside and Bournemouth Airports, said it wanted to sign up to the campaign to demonstrate its greener credentials.
However, within days of the request, it was told politely thanks, but no thanks.
In an email, activist Duncan Clark, a journalist at a left-wing newspaper that backs the campaign, said: “We've taken the view that airports won't be able to participate in 10:10.
“We don't think it's in the spirit of a campaign that directly encourages everyone to take fewer flights to have airports involved.
“We also need to be careful not to open ourselves up to criticism of greenwash from the wider environment movement.
“In particular, we're concerned that allowing airports to sign up would give the impression that the aviation sector as a whole was making great strides on short-term emissions reductions, when in fact the airports represent only a tiny proportion of the emissions of that sector.”
Although 10:10 works with power generator EDF on the campaign, he added: “We feel that allowing airports to participate would be the equivalent of letting power station operators sign up for their office emissions without a parallel commitment on their far more substantial generation emissions.”
Manchester Airport said it was “disappointed”, allowing aviation lobby group FlyingMatters to go more on the attack.
It branded the campaigners “eco-snobs” and their response as “the eco equivalent of political correctness gone mad”.
Its chairman Brian Wilson said: “If the 10:10 campaign were serious about making a difference it wouldn’t matter where the emission cuts came from, so long as they were made.”
He also pointed out that that 10:10’s leader, Franny Armstrong, the filmmaker whom London Mayor Boris Johnson saved from a mugging last week, flew to New York in September for the premiere of her film the Age of Stupid.
Mr Wilson added: “The response smacks of snobbery and rank hypocrisy.”
The campaign was launched at the Tate Modern gallery in London in September and has attracted the support of celebrities including Delia Smith, author Ian McEwan, actor Colin Firth and DJ Sara Cox, and a host of companies such as Tottenham Hotspur football club and EDF.
FlyingMatters’ new director Eugenie Harvey said: “Manchester Airport has ambitious expansion plans that will encourage people to fly more—it would have been incongruous of us to allow them to join.
“As for EDF, they have not signed up, we just work with them as a delivery partner. We wouldn’t let them sign up.”
Asked whether any of her group would be travelling to next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen, she said: “Yes, absolutely—but we’re going by sea and land, not flying.”
