To have ‘slipped the surly bonds of Earth and danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings… and touched the face of God’ is amongst the most ancient dreams of humanity. Never better expressed than in the sonnet of pilot-poet John Gillespie Magee.
Yet inevitably, the green blob has discovered a new target for cancelation: the air show. The magnificent men in their flying machines are being grounded on the altar of net zero.
The most recent cancelation is in Sunderland, which has attracted more than one million visitors each year to see the Red Arrows, the Battle of Britain Memorial flight and aircraft from all over the world.
Council Labour leader Graeme Miller told The Telegraph that if the council and city wanted to get serious about their net-zero commitments, the air show was no longer ‘appropriate.’
‘I can’t think of anything that pumps more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than a bunch of high-performance jets,’ he said, announcing that the air show was to be replaced by a crowd-pleasing triathlon.
Sunderland sadly is not the first such event to be cancelled, and nor will it be the last. The air show at Dunsfold in Surrey was cancelled in 2019, killed by Covid hysteria and a health and safety regime that had become ever more onerous. The air show, staged at the historic aerodrome which defended Britain during the Second World War, and which later became the home of the Harrier Jump Jet, attracted tens of thousands of spectators and raised hundreds of thousands of pounds for charities before it finally succumbed. In the United States, activists are agitating for the cancelation of the celebrated Miramar air show put on by the United States Marine Corps.
‘This is something is optional and for entertainment. It’s choking us, it’s code red for humanity,’ declared one local green militant.
It’s now only a matter of time before the greens will come after every other activity that fails to meet their exacting criteria for environmental virtue.
The war against air shows will be warmly welcomed by in many quarters, even if the claim that there is nothing pumping more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is errant nonsense. The aviation industry produces no more than 2.5 per cent of global carbon emissions. Only a tiny fraction of that can be attributable to air shows.
In the real world, the aviation industry has embarked on a gigantic effort to reduce its carbon footprint, developing electric and hybrid aircraft, flying lower and slower and greener. Exceptions like the proposed Boom Supersonic passenger jet are unlikely to get off the ground. Banning air shows will please those who loathe the idea that anyone might take pleasure celebrating one of humanity’s greatest achievements. It will not retard climate change by five minutes.
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