Here’s the ugly truth no-one is mentioning: the climate now appears to be a lot more sensitive than we thought. In terms of the atmospheric “stock” of carbon, we are already over the limit that we need to remain below to prevent runaway climate change – and we need urgently to scramble to get back into the safe zone. Even before this most recent scientific evidence came to light, the expansion of our aviation sector to meet (and, by providing further capacity, help create) increasing demand was already set to produce an environmental disaster. There is no carbon-neutral, or even significantly carbon-reducing substitute for air travel, and none on the horizon. That means that even the current level of aviation-based emissions, in light of the emissions reductions we will need to make across the entire economy, is unsustainable. By giving the go-ahead to a new runway at Heathrow, therefore, Labour has not only just committed its final betrayal – in environmental terms it is dragging us at full-pelt, kicking and screaming, in the wrong direction. For this Government, even easing its foot ever so slightly off the accelerator is unacceptable. And, perhaps most shamefully of all, those who have historically professed international solidarity with the poor are backing this insane development. Indeed “the TUC has been pressing the government to make Heathrow a genuine travel hub”, according to its General Secretary, Brendan Barber. If Barber is of the opinion that Heathrow doesn’t currently amount to a “genuine travel hub”, one can only imagine what hellish Orwellian vision he has in mind for the future. Aftering pandering to the whims of the financial sector and dragging us into economic meltdown, the Government is now pandering to the whims of business, backed by the unions, and leading us off an ecological precipice.

Is there hope on the horizon? Well, perhaps. The good news is that the wave of political pressure on the Government has split the Cabinet, prompted a good deal of backbench resistance from Labour MPs (which the whips are now disgracefully moving to clamp down on), prompted the Liberal Democrats and Tory party to refrain from giving Heathrow’s expansion its blessing, and looks set to give rise to a serious escalation in the current campaign of civil disobedience. We ain’t seen nothing yet.

Moreover, two heroes of the hour deserve special mention: the activists who devised the amazing initiative that is “Airplot” – buying up a piece of land in the middle of the runway, now being split between as many “beneficial owners” as decide to sign up (join them); and Hayes and Harlington MP John McDonnell, fighting tooth-and-nail for his constituents, many of whose homes will be bulldozed to make way for the new runway, for the victims of climate change, and for the right of Parliament to vote on this matter of national importance. Do watch the footage of his amazing act of protest, carried out in the House of Commons today: you can tune in here and here, and watch a brief interview with him here. Perhaps most extraordinarily, it is for once genuinely difficult to disagree with the verdict of the Daily Mail.