They were disruptive and controversial to say the least. Spied upon, locked up and lambasted by the establishment of their time. The state considered them to be dangerous terrorists and, as Tony Benn put it, "Newsnight would have treated the suffragettes as trouble-makers." But those women who battled for gender equality were later vindicated by history. I suppose it's a testament to their success that the Climate Change Secretary, Ed Miliband, was on Monday citing them as an example of the sort of movement we need on global warming, adding, "Maybe it's an odd thing for someone in government to say." Certainly an odd thing for someone in this government.
Still, his words could not have been timelier. Breaching security fences early on Monday morning, dozens of activists from Plane Stupid established a "fort" on the runway at Stansted airport. One of these "Suffrajets", 21-year-old Lily Kember, a student at Edinburgh University, said:
We're here because our parents' generation has failed us and its now down to young people to stop climate change by whatever peaceful means we have left. We're afraid of what the police might do to us, we're afraid of going to jail but nothing scares us as much as the threat of runaway climate change. We've thought through the consequences of what we're doing here but we're determined to stop as many tonnes of CO2 as we can.
Plane Stupid chose to close Stansted because the government approved the expansion of capacity at the airport by 10 million passengers a year, despite scientists saying that aviation is Britain's fastest growing source of emissions, already amounting to at least 13% of our country's climate impact. Just in the last month, Tyndall Centre climate scientist Professor Kevin Anderson told a conference at the Royal Society, "There should be a compete moratorium on airport expansion", and last week Lord Turner told a conference that if global aviation growth went unchecked, it would eat up 100% of the world's carbon budget by 2050.
Yet ministers plough on with their expansion plans regardless. Plane Stupid activitist Tilly summed it up, when she said:
"We all grew up listening to Blair and Brown talking about the urgent need to slash emissions, but nothing ever happened. Even now politicians from our parents' generation are in Poland holding talks about talks, but still nobody's actually doing anything."
Reports suggest that 57 campaigners were arrested as a result of Monday's protest, and 56 flights were cancelled by Ryanair. With each activist preventing about an average of 41.58 tonnes of CO2 equivalent each, they truly achieved something – the beauty of direct action as opposed to mere protest. That's important given that the mantra of the godfather of climate science, Professor Hansen of Nasa, that "every ton of carbon counts."
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation suggests Plane Stupid saved roughly 2,328 tonnes of carbon dioxide today. At $85 dollars a ton (using Stern figures), Plane Stupid prevented about $197,920 of damage. (That's if, like this government, you don't mind placing a price tag on life and you slip into a "cost-benefit mindset", in the mould of Professor Stern.)
Put against a context of the average Brit emitting 11 tonnes of CO2 a year, today's activity didn't just get the nation talking, it had a real impact. Like the Kingsnorth 6, who shut down one of the dirtiest coal plants in Britain and were later acquitted by a jury of 12 ordinary people, Plane Stupid just made history. But seriously, I wonder what people will think about this protest in 100 years from now? Will that generation's politicians be lauding today's action as a model for defeating their era's defining challenge?
Following requests in the thread, the author has added a link to support the statistic that aviation amounts "to at least 13% of our country's climate impact"