Heathrow airport: climate campaigners chained together on runway

Climate change activists have got onto the north runway at Heathrow airport to launch a protest. A spokesman for direct action group Plane Stupid said a dozen demonstrators cut through a fence and entered the runway at 3.30am. He said the protesters were campaigning against airport expansion and would stay on the runway for as long as possible.

A Heathrow airport spokesman said: “A group of people have breached the airport perimeter fence and are currently staging a protest on the northern runway. “We are working closely with the police who are dealing with the incident. The southern runway remains open. Our priority remains to ensure the safety of the airport community, including passengers, employees and protesters.” A video posted online appeared to show several activists chained together and being spoken to by a police officer. The officer told them: “As a consequence of you being here, you are causing severe disruption and it will be in the millions of pounds because it will take us a while to remove you. “The cost will be in the couple of millions. The airport will attempt to make a civil recovery.” He added: “There are international flights now being diverted.” Earlier this month a long-awaited report recommended that a new runway should be built at Heathrow rather than Gatwick. After three years of investigation, the Airports Commission said Heathrow was best placed to provide “urgently required” capacity, but environmentalists warned that building a new runway there would make it harder to reduce air pollution and climate change emissions.

Collected: http://www.theguardian.com/

Posted by admin on Jul 13 2015. Filed under Climate change. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry