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22 December 2024

Giant elephant visits Council’s climate change conference

Article published: Saturday, December 4th 2010

Campaigners against the expansion of Manchester Airport took a 12 foot inflatable elephant to the city council’s Climate Change Action Plan stakeholder conference on Tuesday 30 November. Members of Manchester Climate Action were highlighting the omission of the airport from the council’s climate strategy  – the ‘elephant in the room’.

Campaigners highlight the omission of Manchester Airport's emissions

Participants arriving at the conference including council leader Sir Richard Leese and a number of business and community representatives were flyered explaining the elephant at the foyer entrance of the Museum of Science and Industry in Castlefields.

Sarah Thomas from Manchester Climate Action said, “Having a Climate Change Action Plan that ignores the impact of the airport is like having a drink driving law that ignores the effects of whiskey. The Council need to get real.”

The first annual stakeholder conference was aimed to engage with residents and businesses of Manchester about reducing their carbon emissions. The event was part of the Council’s Climate Change Action Plan, named ‘Manchester: A Certain Future’, which was published in 2009 and promised to cut the city’s C02 emissions by over 40 per cent by 2020.

The stunt by Manchester Climate Action occurs the week before 11 activists from Manchester Plane Stupid stand trial at Trafford Magistrates Court following a protest at Manchester Airport in May. The trial begins on Monday 6 December 2010 and is expected to three to four days. A show of support is being organised outside court from 9am.

A campaign titled ‘Manchester Airport on Trial’ is being run around the court trial and has received statements of support from Heathrow Labour MP John McDonnell, Independent journalist Johann Hari, and Green Party MP Caroline Lucas.

More: Manchester, QuickKick

Comments

  1. God if only you spent your energies protesting against something demonstrably bad (you know war poverty inequality the Tories etc) rather than something wot someone who claims to know a lot more about it than you out it says could be bad, at some unspecified future time,~probably the world woulnt be FUCKED

    Comment by random thought provocateur on December 6, 2010 at 9:13 pm

  2. […] Giant elephant visits Council’s climate change conference Campaigners against the expansion of Manchester Airport took a 12 foot inflatable elephant to the city council’s Climate Change Action […] […]

    Pingback by Interview with Executive Member for the Environment Nigel Murphy  —   MULE on December 8, 2010 at 2:04 pm

  3. […] Giant elephant visits Council’s climate change conference Campaigners against the expansion of Manchester Airport took a 12 foot inflatable elephant to the city council’s Climate Change Action […] […]

    Pingback by Manchester’s Certain Future?  —   MULE on December 8, 2010 at 7:11 pm

The comments are closed.

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