The world cannot afford an expansion in the number of flights we take - YEP letters

Airport boss Hywel Rees (Yorkshire Evening Post Letters, September 22) once again focusses only on the environmental footprint of his proposed new airport terminal - not the vastly bigger emissions from the significantly increased number of aeroplanes it would serve.

The economic boost claimed by Mr Rees is illusory – the airport actually takes money out of Yorkshire’s economy because most users are on holiday flights to Greece and Spain.

If Mr Rees truly wants a “better flying experience” for his passengers he could use the planning permission he already has to alter the existing terminal.

But this is not the primary purpose of the present application.

It could be argued Mr Rees’s company needs a new terminal to accommodate an increase in passenger numbers from four million per year to seven million.

That doesn’t result in a better experience for thousands of people living under the flight path.

We are surprised that Mr Rees welcomes the independent report (by consultants WSP) that was prepared at the request of Leeds City Council.

In relation to climate change the report speaks of “a significant under- estimate in terms of a reasonable worst-case scenario”.

That under-estimate comes about because the airport excludes two factors from its calculations: the effect of inbound flights and the additional greenhouse effect of emissions being released at high altitude.

WSP estimate that, if those factors are considered, it would result in the emissions figure being four times bigger.

Mr Rees says, “there is not an environmental case against our proposals due to the mitigations we have made.”

This is just nonsense: in their own application documents the airport management admitted in relation to climate change that the effect was potentially significantly adverse.

Mr Rees talks of Leeds as a compassionate city.

We hope he is correct.

But we wonder whether he has noticed that last week, there were wildfires burning across huge expanses of the USA, Brazil and Siberia?

This is the result of just one degree of global heating.

The world cannot afford an expansion in the numbers of flights we take.