In Expansion Rebellion: Using the Law to Fight a Runway and Save the Planet, Celeste Hicks unpacks the complicated legal battles over whether plans to build Heathrow’s third runway contravened the UK’s commitments to international climate targets. Hicks’ blend of legal analysis and interviews with residents makes for an illuminating and engaging account of the case and the wider difficulties of restricting aviation expansion, writes Christopher Shaw.

Expansion Rebellion: Using the Law to Fight a Runway and Save the Planet. Celeste Hicks. Manchester University Press. 2022.

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Celeste Hicks provides an illuminating and enjoyable account of how the UK’s Climate Change Act 2008 (CCA08) and its net zero targets are shaping planning decisions in the UK. The focus is on the (ultimately unsuccessful) legal battles to stop the expansion of Heathrow Airport. Hicks skilfully uses this example to explore wider questions about how campaigners are trying to use the law to hold the UK to account for its climate change commitments. These legal battles boil down to disputes about the extent to which infrastructure projects that were permissible under CCA08 (which mandated 80% reductions by 2050) remain legal under international agreements to limit warming to 1.5°C and revised UK net zero targets requiring a 78% reduction in emissions by 2035. These legal arguments are complex, and the author does an excellent job in simplifying them and providing an entertaining narrative about the fight to stop the expansion of Heathrow Airport.

Hicks skilfully uses [the Heathrow case] to explore wider questions about how campaigners are trying to use the law to hold the UK to account for its climate change commitments.

The book begins with on-the-ground personal stories from the 2019 Judicial Review into the decision to allow a third runway to be built at Heathrow. This use of reportage throughout the book helps bring to life what otherwise risks being quite an abstract, dry account of legal documents and international agreements. The history of international agreements – from the Kyoto Protocol of 1997 through to the COP20 in Paris, where a “High Ambition Coalition” was successful in driving forward a commitment to pursue policies that offer a 66% probability of limiting warming to 1.5°C – forms the backdrop to the ensuing story of the Judicial Review. The UK’s Climate Change Act (CCA) was the first legally binding, long-term emissions target for the government. The CCA did not actually feature in the Heathrow Judicial Review, in part because aviation emissions were not included in the Act. Instead, the Judicial Review was built around the climate change and sustainability provisions in the 2008 Planning Act. This Act provided a framework for assessing if infrastructure projects were in line with the then existing target of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050 in order to stop the planet warming by more than 2°C over pre-industrial (33) levels. Hicks reviews what agreements are in place for limiting emissions from aviation. Such agreements as exist are found wanting. The remit for improving the sustainability of aviation is held by the UN through the Carbon Offsetting and Reduction Scheme (CORSIA). CORSIA does not even aim to reduce emissions from aviation, merely to ensure market forces are deployed to ensure any growth after 2020 is carbon neutral (45). The EU Emission Trading Scheme (ETS) does cover aviation and is seen as more stringent and effective than UN-led efforts to reduce aviation emissions, having reduced EU aviation emissions by 17 megatonnes per year since 2012.

[The UK Climate Change Act 2008] provided a framework for assessing if infrastructure projects were in line with the then existing target of reducing emissions by 80% by 2050 in order to stop the planet warming by more than 2°C over pre-industrial (33) levels.

Chapter Three opens with a visit by Hicks to Harmondsworth, where the author talks to residents, and describes a picturesque rural scene under threat from Heathrow expansion. The villagers were involved in an (unsuccessful) campaign against a fifth terminal at Heathrow. The success of this planning application led directly to plans for a third runway. Labour’s 2003 Aviation White Paper signalled a commitment to airport expansion, seeing that expansion as central to economic growth in the UK (60). Plane Stupid, Climate Camp and other organisations launched a well-coordinated and highly visible campaign against the plans and were joined in this opposition by some conservative MPs. David Cameron campaigned on a promise of no third runway, and upon his election as Prime Minister in 2010, Cameron repeated this pledge, promising no new runways at Heathrow, Stanstead or Gatwick. However, in 2012 Cameron announced a review of the case for airport expansion. That process resulted in the recommendation of a new runway in the southeast by 2020.

The reference to international agreements implied there was no need to include emissions from the arrival and departure of international flights in the UK’s domestic carbon budgets.

Hicks recounts how the Airports Commission concluded that the third runway at Heathrow could be delivered within the UK Climate Change Act’s 2008 obligations. Key to this claim was the assumption that emissions could be mitigated through international agreements such as the EU ETS (which the UK has left since Brexit). The reference to international agreements implied there was no need to include emissions from the arrival and departure of international flights in the UK’s domestic carbon budgets.

Chapter Four examines the claims made by Heathrow regarding its plans to limit emissions in line with international agreements. Hicks provides an accessible and authoritative overview of those measures, including carbon trading through EU ETS, offsetting, sustainable aviation fuels and electric planes. She finds them all wanting, and short of credibility.

Hicks argues the Judicial Review defeat is not the end of the story because campaigners have successfully forced the government to review the Energy National Policy Statement […] in light of the incorporation of the Paris Agreement 1.5°C target into the UK’s net zero policies.

The efforts to use the 1.5°C targets as a means for overturning the decision to grant permission for a third runway at Heathrow ultimately failed, as the Supreme Court ruled the CCA08 targets were the targets governing UK climate policy at the time permission was granted, so the correct procedures were followed in granting permission for a third runway. Despite the failure of the Judicial Review to overturn permission for the third runway at Heathrow, Hicks sees some (small) reason for hope. In the fifth chapter, Hicks argues the Judicial Review defeat is not the end of the story because campaigners have successfully forced the government to review the Energy National Policy Statement (a foundational piece of planning legislation like Airports National Policy Statement) in light of the incorporation of the Paris Agreement 1.5°C target into the UK’s net zero policies. However, the Judicial Review suggests efforts to challenge planning on the basis that targets have changed is now unlikely to succeed. All judicial reviews can do is assess whether governments correctly follow procedures laid out in the 2008 Planning Act. Larger considerations about the legitimacy of targets are beyond their scope (203). Ultimately, the question posed by the author is, are these legal challenges actually leading to a drop in greenhouse gas emissions? The evidence is not clear.

The pandemic did not create a lasting reappraisal of our values and attitudes to travel. Hicks notes that the political and cultural direction of travel is firmly towards ongoing growth of aviation.

The book was written in the aftermath of the Covid-19 lockdowns, when passenger numbers had still not returned to pre-pandemic highs, forcing Heathrow to put its plans for expansion on hold. However, July 6th 2023 saw a record number of flights in a single day, so the case for expansion is very much back on the agenda. The pandemic did not create a lasting reappraisal of our values and attitudes to travel. Hicks notes that the political and cultural direction of travel is firmly towards ongoing growth of aviation and that there is little support for trying to limit growth in flying (41), nor any desire to tax aviation fuel, which keeps costs of air travel artificially low.

Will the floods and wildfires that ravaged tourist hotspots in Europe and beyond dampen the appetite for travel? It seems unlikely. The most we can expect is for people to choose different, more northerly destinations to fly to on their summer holidays.

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Image Credit: hacan2009 on Flickr.