Sir Montgomery Cecil, President of SPURT, has embarked on a mad-as-a-bucket-of-frogs spoof campaign - telling the world to quit moaning, forget about the poor, and get flying while you still can.

 

Sir Monty's Corporate Spin:

Here’s what those muesli-munching eco-terrorists don’t tell you:

• Maybe climate change is happening, but it’s too late to stop it. So enjoy yourself and keep on flying. In fact, fly more since many destinations might soon be uninhabitable.
• Climate change hits the poorest hardest, but those who fly have money. It’s not our problem, it’s theirs.
• Climate change is a depressing subject, and nobody wants to be depressed. What we want are cheap flights.
• Everyone enjoys travelling. Why stop doing something you enjoy because the world might be in perilous danger and tens of millions might die?
• The Stern Report proves that aviation accounts for 700 million tonnes of global C02 emissions. That’s only a little bit more than the whole of the UK economy, so what’s all the fuss?
• As a businessman I have shareholders to think about, but those yoghurt peddlers won’t shut up about the poor and starving, who don’t even fly.
• Even our Prime Minister says we should keep flying and he is a great man. His carbon footprint is 800 times greater than the average person’s. Now THAT is what I call leadership.
• Those eco losers think money is bad, unless you’re giving it to them, but putting profit before the planet is what got us here and long may it reign. Neverending economic growth is every responsible capitalists duty. And that means more flights, for more people... forever. Onwards and upwards!

What the Penguin has to say:

Forget the corporate spin, this is what the airline industry don’t want you to know:

• Even if you ‘greened’ your entire economy - changed every lightbulb and all drove hybrid cars - you’d still miss the UK’s goal of a 60% cut in CO2 emissions, and all because of aviation growth. How clever of your government to exclude international flights from the target.
• Airlines benefit from tax breaks worth £9billion a year. This means your government is subsidising cheap flights so that British tourists can take another £15bn out of the economy. Even to a penguin, that’s plane stupid.
• Airlines admit flying is responsible for 2% of the world’s CO2 emissions. What they forget to say is that the high altitude magnifies the damage by 2-4 times. And while everyone else needs to cut back, aircraft emissions will double over the next 20 years. By 2030, aviation will account for around 20% of UK emissions.
• Don’t pin your hopes on science and technology - this will only improve fuel efficiency by 1-2% a year, a drop in our ever-heating ocean.
• Most cheap flights aren’t even necessary. Almost 50% of flights in Europe and the UK are under 300 miles, while taking the train emits 10 times less CO2.
• The growth of flying will bugger any chance of stopping climate change. And it’s your government who is subsidising the aviation industry and planning to expand almost every British airport.
• Even down here in Antarctica, we heard that 63% of Sun readers were willing to sacrifice a foreign holiday by air to save the planet.

Jeff Gazzard, AirportWatch spokesman, said: “We hope this campaign will be impossible to ignore - and the Man from Spurt does just that. Sir Monty is clearly bonkers but the serious point is that the real madness lies in our Government's approach to aviation. We need to get people to see and understand the worrying impact of aviation growth on climate change and help us tell the Government to start controlling and reducing aviation's damaging greenhouse gas emissions right now!”

The campaign is a direct result of the UK's recent carbon cut announcements, which have conveniently omitted aviation emissions altogether, and which some are describing as just a lot of hot air.

Sir Monty's campaign will be hard for British Ministers to ignore, since every time they head to Heathrow on the Heathrow Express train, they'll have to pass the poster below...