Hello and welcome to the Strawman, the daily climate newsletter that’s like a centre court match at Wimbeldon - fun, fast, and full of exciting action.

This week, the Dutch government won a landmark legal case to reduce flights at Amsterdam’s main airport. Let’s get in to it.

No Fly Zone

This week, an appeals court ruled that the Dutch Government can reduce flights at Amsterdam’s main airport despite major airlines such as KLM, easyJet and Delta protesting and a previous ruling going in the opposite direction.

The Dutch government told big Aviation ‘you’re grounded’ but they just weren’t having it.

The Government proposed to reduce flights from an annual 500,000 to 460,000 - an 8% reduction.

They put forward an environmental case arguing that the impact of flying has adverse effects on the local environment from noise pollution to nitrogen dioxide emissions. However, it took getting to the appeals court for them to be able to move forward.

I don’t know about you but still seems like an awful lot of flights…

Night Night, Night Flights

The Government is also proposing to move forward with a ban on night flights as well as a reversal of a plan to build a new runway.

The new ruling is expected to inspire other European countries to move towards better balancing environmental impact and financial gains. France, for example, recently banned short-haul domestic flights.

Airlines argue that this is the wrong battle to fighting and instead we should be focussed on alternative fuels that could have a bigger impact. But then again, they’d say that wouldn’t they.

‘Til next time.

The Strawman

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