Make your mind up

The Telegraph has decided to re-spin Lord Adonis' comments in Beijing about the need to cut down travel to save the planet. But Adonis is in a spin either way.

Here is what Adonis said, as reported in both yesterday's report and a new one today:

“We’ll never sell a low-carbon future to the public if it depends on a deprivation model. I’m convinced that there’s no necessary trade-off between a low carbon future and more or less transport,”
...
“If you can radically cut emissions as a result of new transport technology it is not necessary to face people with an ‘either-or’ choice between a low carbon future and big cuts in travel.”

Yesterday, the Telegraph presented Adonis' remarks about the personal choices of consumers, claiming that Adonis

"said it was not realistic to expect people to curtail their travel habits in the name of global warming.."

Today, realising it had missed a trick, the paper presents the remarks as undermining government policies that discourage travel, claiming that Adonis:

"said emissions can be cut without forcing people to make personal sacrifices in their lifestyle."

I think today's story is a more legitimate interpretation of what Adonis said and this leaves him even more confused about his government's policy. A couple of weeks ago, I pointed out that Adonis' support for new rail links that cut short haul air travel and therefore carbon emissions undermined the government's claim that aviation emissions are irrelevant because they will be offset under a carbon trading scheme. Now - as the Telegraph points out - Adonis has undermined the rationale for taxes that seek to restrict road and air travel.

In last week's New Statesman, Dominic Sandbrook described Adonis as one of the current political scene's few "overtly intellectual politicians". Perhaps he's too clever for his own good because his main talent seems to be tying himself up in knots.

Yes, it matters

Yesterday's stunning Guardian story about the conspiracy between the Department for Transport and aviation lobby group Flying Matters didn't get half the attention it deserved and to be honest I'm only just catching up with it. The Guardian has got hold of Flying Matters documents showing that:

Civil servants at the Department for Transport (DfT) asked a top aviation lobby group [Flying Matters] for help to win the parliamentary battle over keeping aircraft emissions out of key climate change legislation

This is one government department using outside lobbyists to undermine another department's bill, which is pretty outrageous. The lobbyists also offered help to the all party parliamentary aviation group, something it only partially denied:

Michelle di Leo denied the suggestion Flying Matters had offered funding. "We did not offer the All Party Parliamentary Aviation Group money. We offered to help them with their secretarial work, not set their agenda. Our role is to get attention for issues. Yes we generated headlines. That's what PR people do. They place stories."

Be careful what you wish for

Green Party MEP Caroline Lucas has a blog on newstatesman.com which she opens with the following observation:

Environment Secretary Ed Miliband should be careful what he wishes for. No sooner had he told the Guardian that more popular mobilisation on climate change was needed, than the activist group Plane Stupid kindly obliged.

It's a good point, even if the younger Miliband is in fact the energy and climate change secretary. In fact, Miliband had called for a popular mobilisation when he said virtually the same things to the Environment Agency conference two weeks ago.

Arguments against additional aviation

The Guardian's report on today's protest at Stansted makes the case against allowing an inexorable expansion of aviation - in the words of those who are inconvenienced.

Vivienne Brinton, 56, of Harlow, Essex, had been due to fly to her second home in France until her flight was cancelled. "I suppose people will have some sympathy with the protesters," she said..

"But in the modern world we live in, people want to travel. Cheap flights allow us to have homes elsewhere."

Another woman said she was flying to Bremen, Germany, to spend the day at a Christmas market. "The flight has been cancelled because some delightful people have decided to drive a fire engine around a runway, we hear. I think it really is a shame because they are not going to get any sympathy because of this disruption."

Clearly disrupting passengers risks being counter-productive but why someone flying to Germany to spend the day at a Christmas market expects sympathy is unclear. Or rather, it shows the situation we've got ourselves into.