New runway to create runaway pollution

Some time ago I produced a diagram in this very column showing how a second runway at Dublin Airport need not send any extra airplanes over Portmarnock.
Some scoffed, some threw their eyes to heaven (and their papers in the bin). Others just pitied me.
And yet, lo and behold, in granting permission for the second runway, right up there in condition number three of the decision is precisely the scheme I outlined. Damn, it good to be right an odd time!
As I also suspected, An Bord Pleanala allowed the runway despite all the objections and opposition, including the opinion of their own planning inspector. The economic arguments, or should I say conventional economic arguments, were always going to be the deciding factor.
But when we get our runway, we'll be getting a host of problems along with it, as the Portmarnock protest group UPROAR very ably pointed out.
Perhaps the biggest problem on the horizon for the airport is the problem of global warming and the growing alarm at the emissions of aircraft. Despite some very impressive new efficiencies in aircraft design, the overall emissions of the airline industry continues to rise with the huge growth in budget airlines.
Airplanes might well be the first target of carbon taxes.
In the future cars will run on renewables generated electricity and hydrogen. That won't work for aircraft. The enormous thrust required to get airplanes off the ground needs jet engines. And jet engines need to burn fuel.
Although many people do not realise this jet engines basically burn a diesel fuel called Jet A. These fuels could be replaced with bio-fuels. While jet engines would still be polluting at least they would be carbon neutral. The Irish government should insist that aircraft using Dublin Airport start burning blended fuels so as to offset any increase in traffic generated by the new runway.
In the longer term, we are going to have to consider seriously building a fixed link to Britain. According to some analyses the Dublin-London air corridor is now the second busiest in the world. And yet Dublin and London are only 300 miles apart, just around the range the the new high speed trains are designed to compete with aircraft. It has to start somewhere. It is unimaginable that in 50 to 100 years from now that Ireland won't have a fixed link to Britain so we should make a start now.
One final point. In recent weeks we have had the Aer Lingus Shannon debacle. We have also had widespread media reports on the dire state of Heathrow where a private company has more interest in providing space for shops than for passengers. The conclusion is this: under no circumstances should the privatisation of Dublin Airport be contemplated. It's just too important to the city and the country to ever fall into private hands. If there has to be competition then so be it, with an airport at Baldonnel or further out. But there must be always some democratic control of our main airport.