Dear Ethan,

I am thinking of attending the Climate Action Camp at Heathrow next week. Flying makes me SO angry. But is it ethical to attend this camp (which may emit carbon of its own), and is it ethical to break the law in the name of opposing the evils of manmade flight? Ethan, please advise.

Jonty DeMontfort,
Harrow, Middlesex

Dear Jonty,

YES, it is ethical to attend the Climate Action Camp – and that is exactly what I will be doing next week. So what if we emit a little bit of carbon in the name of protesting against the carbon-addicted aviation industry’s daily destruction of millions of black Africans’ lives and, worse, its assaults on the biodiversity of some of the world’s wildest and most beautiful ecosystems? Our CO2 will be nothing compared with the tonnes of carbon emitted by the foul and drunken masses who think nothing of paying 3p to hop aboard a Ryanair or easyJet flight just so they can abuse prostitutes in some rotten hellhole in the East.

So yes, Jonty, I am willing to make a small carbon-footprint at Heathrow if it helps to reduce the much larger bootprint – nay, the million-mile SKIDMARK – that is left on our vulnerable planet by the herds of horrible holidaymakers who think that floods, hurricanes, pestilence and poverty are a price worth paying so they can top up their tans and win the ‘I’m the brownest!’ competition amongst a gaggle of Vicky Pollards at their local beercan-littered bus-stops.

Now I know whom that brave protester at the Climate Chaos demo in London last year was referring to with his placard saying ‘JAIL CO2 BASTARDS’. He was referring to stag night drunks who stain Prague with their puke, fat families who waddle around the beaches of southern Spain in ill-fitting flipflops, and those slags (I’m sorry but there is no other word for them) who teeter on white high heels through the streets of Faliraki on the lookout for cheap booze and easy (and probably unprotected) sex. Jail is just what these CO2 BASTARDS deserve. Through their ceaseless and unnecessary flying they are as guilty of MURDER as surely as if they had suffocated that poor African family with their own coarse, manual labour hands.

My only concern is that the Climate Action Camp will be TOO TIMID. I am worried that the protesters have had their carbon-busting cojones removed by the British Airport Authority’s injunction which says the demo must not ‘disrupt the operation of the airport’.

I’m sorry, but what is the point of having a protest camp on some field within the vicinity of Heathrow airport? We need to set up a camp on the runways! We need to board the planes and scream and shout and prevent these Devil’s Vessels from taking off! We need to stand in the pathway of rotten Ryanair planes as they gear up to fly yet another cargo of carbon criminals to the Czech Republic, emulating that brave protester who stood in the path of a Chinese tank in Tiananmen Square in 1989!

Only our protests are far more important than his. Yes, he stood up to some dodgy old communists, but let’s face it, if he had had his way then China would have been put on the path towards liberal ‘democracy’ and we know where that leads: to the arrogance of man-made elections and the crazed destructiveness of free choice and consumerism. We Climate Campers are taking on the World Capitalist Oil-Producing Neocon Superstructure that privileges the right to sunbathe over the right to life, and we are demanding something far more honourable than the Tiananmen man did: we’re calling for LESS choice and LESS freedom in the name of saving the planet from the poisonous gases of the holidaymaking hordes. My chant during the Climate Camp week will be: ‘What do we want?’ ‘A 65 per cent reduction in all forms of greenhouse gas emissions by 2017, a minimum tax of £1 per mile on all short-haul flights under 600 miles, and greater investment in pro-cycling policies including the painting of at least a 175cm cycle lane on all major thoroughfares!’ ‘When do we want it?’ ‘Now!’

The time for talk is over. The time for debate is long over. (I despise those vile right-wing, oil-funded cranks who say we should have an ‘open debate’ about climate change and its impact. How low can they go? A DEBATE while people are dying? They make me sick.) As I have argued on the Climate Action Camp’s various online discussion boards, there’s no point trying to ‘raise awareness’ or ‘educate the masses’ about how destructive their holidays are. These people have been brainwashed into becoming Tourism Terrorists, and unless you’re planning to kidnap them and imprison them in the Climate Action Camp so that you can decode their barcode-littered consumption-driven minds (actually, maybe that’s not such a bad idea…), then there is little you can do to change their ways.

No, we need direct action, and lots of it. We should follow the example of that Plane Stupid woman who superglued herself to the front doors of lastminute.com’s head office (that holiday-facilitating company is certainly pushing the planet to its last minute). Jonty, why not superglue yourself to the wing of an aeroplane? Surely even the aviation industry is not so morally depraved that it would let a plane take off with a protester on the wing! (But PLEASE can we stop comparing anti-flying protesters to Suffragettes. Those women fought only for their own right to vote, and they gave rise to the entry of women into the carbon-emitting workforce. We, by contrast, are selflessly fighting ON BEHALF of others: the poor, the unborn, the non-human, the vegetation, the clinically insane.)

Jonty, I invite you to pop along to my stall at the Climate Action Camp (which will be made entirely from hemp), at which I will be drumming up support for a Flight Offenders Register. This is the only solution for dealing with repeat flyers whose actions are contributing directly to freak weather incidents and to millions of deaths by water and fire. One brave green writer has argued that flying across the Atlantic is now as ‘unacceptable as child abuse’. Actually, it’s worse than child abuse – flying KILLS children, day in day out. We need a database of all those who fly more than once every five years and who thus are responsible for destruction on a breathtaking scale. The register should be free to view so that anyone can find out if a frequent flyer is living near them. We cannot educate the sun monsters and boozehounds who jet abroad without a moment’s consideration for Gaia…but we can NAME AND SHAME THEM.

So, do stop by and say hello. I have blonde messed-up hair (zany!), and I’ll be wearing a hemp-based shirt and organic-cotton denims and waving a petition titled ‘Bring These Flying Fascists To Justice’.

From article:

". . . is it ethical to break the law in the name of opposing the evils of manmade flight?

Ethan, please advise."

Too funny. Well Ethan, no it is not ethical to fly. If the creator had meant for you to fly, you would have wings. (And if the creator had intended for you to think, you would have a brain.) ;)

The Heathrow climate camp set up to encourage a reduction in the use of fossil fuels appeared to be backfiring yesterday after it emerged that it had created a boom in private jet travel. This from the Telegraph in UK:

"The camp, on the outskirts of the airport and now 600 strong, was set up to inspire people to lead more environmentally friendly lives and in particular to reduce flying.

But the threat to cause disruption at Heathrow over the weekend has had an unexpected consequence: businessmen and first-class travellers have switched to smaller airports and private aircraft.

Twinjet, a charter company, said there had been a 15 per cent increase in first-time private jet bookings this week." ......

There was more copy to this story but you get the point.

George Monbiot is at the camp:

...But what really jumps out is the intellectual ferment here. The camp has become a kind of free university. There are workshops on carbon trading, decentralised energy, faith and the environment, roads and climate change, albedo, tipping points, growth in China, oil-free food production, 12-volt electrics, feminism, deep ecology, singing, banner-making and composting.

The standard of discussion is high, and the meetings, when they are allowed to, go on forever. At half-past midnight last night we were still talking about radiative forcing by trace gases. Even the right-wing press has been forced to concede that we know what we are talking about...

http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/george_monbiot/2007/08/the_new_face_of_activism.html