An Open Letter to the Teachers of Ontario
Dear teachers,
At the age
of 57, after teaching about transport and climate
change for ten years, I am now facing criminal charges for
refusing
to leave a protest which began outside the offices of the Ontario
Teachers
Pension Plan (OTPP) in London. I have
never
done anything like this before. I am
appealing for your help, to persuade the trustees of your pension plan
to end
their support for airport expansion, which is threatening to violate
the UK’s
legal obligations to cut carbon emissions.
You may
have read or seen about the recent actions of
Extinction Rebellion, blocking roads in central London.
You may not have heard that on the first day
of those protests, on April 15th, a group of us protested
and blocked
the roads outside the offices of OTPP. Your
pension plan owns five
airports across Europe, (as well as other companies dependent on
fossil
fuels.) One of them is Bristol, where I
live. Bristol airport has recently
applied to expand both its flight capacity and car parking to
support it. It has longer-term
plans to more than double passenger movements by 2040.
This video,
featuring
young people from this area, explains why those plans are particularly
unsustainable. London City Airport, also
owned by OTPP, also has big
expansion plans.
The Climate
Change Act 2008 commits the UK to reducing its
emissions by 80% by 2050, which poses a problem for a government
committed to
expanding aviation. The government’s own
Climate Change Committee has recommended a cap on aviation growth,
keeping aviation emissions flat, while the rest of the economy has to
cut more deeply - by 85%. But even that
favourable treatment is not
enough for the government and airport owners.
Current plans will bust that cap, as the Committee has told
the government.
And all
that was based on the current targets.
Following
the Paris Agreement those targets are under
review and are likely to be toughened.
We are now on a collision course between airport expansion and
the law.
Unfortunately, the courts have only limited powers to compel
governments to
obey the law. Decisions made today will bust the carbon budgets
in a few years time. By then, it will be too late to correct a
disastrous mistake. As the reports of the IPCC make clear, the
consequences of climate change include: sea level rise,
desertification, extreme weather events, extinctions of species and
mass migrations from areas that become uninhabitable. That is why
we have reluctantly decided that
civil disobedience is now needed.
I am
heartened to see that in Canada, as here in Britain, school
students have been demonstrating to demand more effective action on
climate
change. We owe them our support.
Did anyone ask you if
you wanted your money invested in this
way? If you are concerned about the impact of climate change on
our students
and our children, please email the
board of your pension plan (politely) asking
them to withdraw their support for airport expansion.
If they cannot stop the expansion plans, then
they should divest from airports, and other companies dependent on
fossil
fuels. Investing on the wrong side of history is not a
smart move in the long-run. Here is a list of
board
members. The email convention seems to
be: firstname_secondname@otpp.com.
Thank you.
Dr Steve Melia
Senior Lecturer in Transport and
Planning
