Pearson or the Island Airport. Which is worse?
OK, on your assertions:
1) A Google search for hotels near Pearson brings up at least eight, and I know of at least one more, all within about 2km of Pearson, and most bang on the flight path. That doesn't count the Toronto Convention Centre, also across the road from the airport. Seems a lot of people stay in hotels you claim they don't like.
2) As for the claim that airport pollution causes illness: I have yet to see a study that successfully differentiated between the general smog of a city such as Toronto (where cars and other vehicles produce at least seven times the pollution that airplanes do) and aircraft operations on the scale proposed for Toronto City Centre Airport.
3) Most importantly, can you explain (and if possible provide support for) your contention that shifting traffic from Pearson will do nothing for the people of Malton? If air traffic has the baneful effects you claim, then it stands to reason that exposing the children of Malton to less of it can only benefit them.
As for the question of environmental ethics: I do believe in environmental equity. That doesn't necessarily mean going to extravagant lengths to share the burdens, but it certainly means not going to great lengths to concentrate them all on particular people. It doesn't make sense to me to spend millions of dollars to destroying Toronto City Centre Airport and risk Canada's medical transportation system in order to dump all the aviation pollution on northwest Toronto and northeast Mississauga.
I have two reasons for this. First, I believe in environmental fairness because I consider fairness a basic value period. Second, I believe in environmental equity because it encourages responsibility. When the city of Toronto proposed a world's fair bid (which, fortunately, the federal government saved us from by refusing to spend Canadians' money on it), TEDCO projected the visitor traffic would have generated over 300 aircraft movements a day. Community AIR supported that proposal, 300+ takeoffs or landings a day and all. If we had known that 5% of those travellers would have come in to City Centre Airport, I strongly suspect that a lot of the people who supported the expo bid would have opposed it. Removing the sense of immunity by sharing the environmental consequences of things we don't always like to think about concentrates the mind wonderfully.
John Spragge
1) A Google search for hotels near Pearson brings up at least eight, and I know of at least one more, all within about 2km of Pearson, and most bang on the flight path. That doesn't count the Toronto Convention Centre, also across the road from the airport. Seems a lot of people stay in hotels you claim they don't like.
2) As for the claim that airport pollution causes illness: I have yet to see a study that successfully differentiated between the general smog of a city such as Toronto (where cars and other vehicles produce at least seven times the pollution that airplanes do) and aircraft operations on the scale proposed for Toronto City Centre Airport.
3) Most importantly, can you explain (and if possible provide support for) your contention that shifting traffic from Pearson will do nothing for the people of Malton? If air traffic has the baneful effects you claim, then it stands to reason that exposing the children of Malton to less of it can only benefit them.
As for the question of environmental ethics: I do believe in environmental equity. That doesn't necessarily mean going to extravagant lengths to share the burdens, but it certainly means not going to great lengths to concentrate them all on particular people. It doesn't make sense to me to spend millions of dollars to destroying Toronto City Centre Airport and risk Canada's medical transportation system in order to dump all the aviation pollution on northwest Toronto and northeast Mississauga.
I have two reasons for this. First, I believe in environmental fairness because I consider fairness a basic value period. Second, I believe in environmental equity because it encourages responsibility. When the city of Toronto proposed a world's fair bid (which, fortunately, the federal government saved us from by refusing to spend Canadians' money on it), TEDCO projected the visitor traffic would have generated over 300 aircraft movements a day. Community AIR supported that proposal, 300+ takeoffs or landings a day and all. If we had known that 5% of those travellers would have come in to City Centre Airport, I strongly suspect that a lot of the people who supported the expo bid would have opposed it. Removing the sense of immunity by sharing the environmental consequences of things we don't always like to think about concentrates the mind wonderfully.
John Spragge
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