Where is the sense in adding another runway at Heathrow? - Yorkshire Post Letters

If someone offered you £1m to kill your grandmother, would you take it? I hope not. What if accepting £10m meant thousands more early deaths? (By making air pollution worse, for example).

What if a billionaire profited from a product that slowly poisoned humanity - would you support them or fight to stop it?

If economic growth is treated as an end in itself that’s the kind of thing that happens - and that’s exactly what the UK Government is doing. They focus on the dosh and downplay the harm.

Adding an extra runway at Heathrow will probably cause around 100 extra deaths a year, worsen pollution and make the lives of those who live there even more a living hell. Meanwhile more than 20 more airports have plans to expand.

All the while the plastics industry grows relentlessly, quietly embedding toxins in our bodies, air, and soil. The building industry is being allowed to bypass planning rules by paying to offset damage elsewhere instead of preventing it on their own sites.

Where is the line between growth that harms and growth that heals? Can we design a system of governance that rewards regeneration instead of harm - or are we doomed to support profit chasing forever while the rest of society suffers and disintegrates?

Labour promised change, yet their overall strategy embeds widespread harm through their outdated and incomplete conception of ‘growth’ (However Reform or Conservatives would make things far worse),

Labour, stop pretending growth at any cost is acceptable. Reward what creates wellbeing. Deincentivise what creates harm. Jobs that create long term harm for the many, while creating short term financial gain for a few, are not worth having. Let’s see that decade of national renewal you promised.