Carbon emissions from aviation

Sir, – It is quite staggering we are in a position where the very cogent arguments of Prof Hannah Daly even have to be put forward at all, against the Dublin Airport Authority’s application to increase flights from Dublin Airport (“Carbon emissions from aviation can’t be swept under the carpet”, Opinion, Climate, June 6th).

As starkly set out by UN Secretary General António Guterres this week, limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees is “hanging by a thread”. And with it our children’s futures.

That a semi-State body, such as the DAA, is suggesting it be allowed act in direct opposition to the scientific and moral imperative of reducing emissions as steeply and quickly as we can is frankly unconscionable. The proposed expansion would result in approximately 750,000 additional tonnes of polluting emissions, as Prof Daly notes, effectively wiping out other hard-fought climate action gains. How there is not public outrage at such a knowingly harmful plan is baffling. Even more so when it’s being repeatedly suggested by aviation industry representatives that planning processes and regulations should be bypassed entirely to accommodate it.

Semi-State bodies should serve the interests of the State and its people first and foremost, and that includes our youngest and most vulnerable citizens. The State’s children are being utterly failed by such proposals, and moreover by our failure, as adults, to speak up for them. – Yours, etc,