Camden New Journal - Letters: Heathrow

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Camden New Journal - Letters to the Editor
Published: 29 November 2007

Heath could do without the ‘Heathrow’ effect

• I READ with huge concern the story in Friday’s papers claiming that ‘north London will bear the brunt of noise pollution from the proposed third Heathrow runway.’
An alarming map shows take-offs over Camden and, worse still, Hampstead and thus Hampstead Heath “every few minutes in peak periods”. Who will be able to write another book, paint another painting in the din? Creative life in the entire area will be disrupted, the habitat of wildlife traumatised by the pall of air pollution from flights constantly passing overhead. Why has the Town Hall been silent on the subject?
Now that St Pancras International has opened, Ken Livingstone has very sensibly proposed a ban on all flights to Paris and Brussels. Taking Ken’s great idea further, surely the government ought to be building a nationwide high-speed TGV railway network with French assistance and banning (apart from one to Belfast) all internal flights in the UK – rather than squandering billions on a doom-laden project which will help destroy the planet? Is this really a “green” government?
This ill-advised project lacks joined-up thinking. As any resource sector specialist will tell you, we have already hit “peak oil.” With supplies dwindling rapidly and the oil price set to hit $200 a barrel or far more, few anyway will be able to afford to fly by the time the project is completed. The age of cheap oil is well and truly over, never to return. A major Saudi field may fail at any time; the Saudis have been overstating their reserves to gain American protection from Iran; the year of acute crisis is projected to be 2012. This third runway idea is utter folly, and yesterday’s thinking. In a way, it is as archaic an idea as funding a vast new canal system just as the first railways came on steam. During the Cold War, Camden opted out and became a ‘nuclear free zone.’ Why not make the entire LBC area a ‘no fly zone’? Our Borough is totally unique.
CHRISTOPHER TRUMAN
Marsden Street, NW5

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, Camden New Journal, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@camdennewjournal.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Tuesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number. Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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