Plane Stupid: protesting against third runway at Heathrow

[url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/may/31/activists.prisonsandpr... the name. And the action is funny too![/url] Looks like they might be in a bit of trouble for it, though.

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We're in the most "ridiculous situation", marvels Graham Thompson. "The public are saying climate change can't be that bad, otherwise the government would do something. And the government is like, well, it is that bad, but we can't do something because the public's not ready for it. And the government goes to campaigners and says, you have to prepare the public so they're ready so we can act. And we go to the public, and they say well obviously it's not that serious because the government aren't acting yet.

"I mean, for God's sake," Thompson adds, head in hands, half-laughing. "Will someone do something?"

What Thompson, and four other members of the environmental network Plane Stupid, decided to do in February was to scale the roof of the Houses of Parliament to demonstrate against the planned third runway at Heathrow airport. They still do not know if they are going to be prosecuted, or whether their protest will be remembered as a tipping point in the fate of the third runway. What they did, however, was place the anti-aviation debate firmly on the political map.

"If you go back a year, the third runway was inevitable," he says. "Lots of people were saying it's disastrous in terms of climate change, but it's inevitable. Now it's not inevitable. And we would claim some of the credit for that."

Plane Stupid has no official leader or formal hierarchy, or media figurehead. It is a loose association of autonomous regional groups, which have staged illegal protests across the UK.

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