Thursday 27 February 2020

Climate campaigners win Heathrow expansion case

Today, the Court of Appeal ruled that the government's Heathrow's expansion decision was unlawful because it failed to consider the Paris climate agreement.


Friends of the Earth, one of the environmental groups that brought the case, said the ruling was "an absolutely ground-breaking result for climate justice":
This judgment has exciting wider implications for keeping climate change at the heart of all planning decisions.
It's time for developers and public authorities to be held to account when it comes to the climate impact of their damaging developments.
The court ruling is bad news for all businesses and investors in the carbon economy, who will have to factor in the increasing risks of legal challenges
As Lord Deben, the chair of the advisory Committee on Climate Change, put it: “The fact is, it is the law that we have to keep our emissions down.”