Row over seriousness of EEDA's climate change commitments

11.44.36am BST (GMT +0100) Mon 23rd Oct 2006

A row broke out in Newmarket last week about what needs to be done to prevent airports and aeroplanes causing catastrophic damage to the environment and the economy by driving global warming beyond controllable limits.

The scene of the row was a conference on global warming and the regional economy organised by the East of England Development Agency, a central government quango tasked with developing the regional economy.

Liberal Democrat councillors from various parts of the East of England urged the regional Development Agency (EEDA) to 'get real' about climate change. They were responding to EEDA's chairman, Richard Ellis, who insisted that the effect of aviation on global warming was a matter for central government and 'should be put to one side' - effectively ignored.

Lib Dem Councillor Alan Dean from Uttlesford District Council said: 'I am particularly critical of EEDA's wish to ignore the effect of carbon emissions from aircraft. They even produced a report at the conference from Cambridge Econometrics that claimed no has any measurements of aviation emissions. That is plain nonsense!

'It is starting to look as though EEDA is the official apologist for the aviation industry in this region. As global warming is the greatest threat to the economy of a region that is extremely vulnerable to the effects of global warming, this should be a serious concern to everyone who lives and works here.'

Councillor Chris White, the Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on the East of England Assembly and a Hertfordshire county councillor, added: 'We won't do our bit for climate change until we put carbon reduction at the heart of all our thinking. This means not expanding airports just because they are subsidised by the tax system. This also means not holding sustainability conferences in venues which can't be reached by public transport.'

ENDS

Notes to editors: The day after the Newmarket conference Oxford University produced a shocking report showing that plans for aviation growth threaten totally to undermine UK attempts to reduce carbon emissions stop global warming running out of control in coming years. This can be found at: http://www.eci.ox.ac.uk/research/energy/predictanddecide.php