The Calgary Airport Authority is spending $2.5 billion on a new runway, making it the country's longest.

The Calgary Airport Authority has decided the city needs a $2.5-billion airport expansion, including the longest runway in North America, and now Calgarians have to fork over at least $300 million if city officials are adamant on building new infrastructure to accommodate the tunnel. But the tunnel, and the debate about whether it should be built, is not the real story. The bigger question is: Do we really need the runway?

The city has just released a fine piece of work called Options for Reducing GHG Emissions in Calgary. The report charts a course for an 80 per cent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the next 40 years. Achieving these targets will allow us to meet our international commitments on climate change, including the Kyoto Protocol and the City’s Climate Change Accord — an undertaking with the World Energy City’s Partnership (WECP), which is a 15-city agreement to support their local energy sector. As importantly, it meets the commitments made to the citizens of Calgary through the imagineCalgary and Plan It Calgary processes, both of which are designed to create a sustainable future.

Where does the airport authority stand on reducing emissions, and does it have a long-term strategy on this? Missing In Action. Meeting these politically ambitious, though ecologically conservative GHG targets will require all hands on deck, yet the new runway will result in more, not less, GHG emissions. The words “climate change” are nowhere to be found in the YYC Strategic Operating Plan 2009-2013, in which the expansion is pitched.

Despite the tobacco company-styled propaganda machine launched against climate change science, the latest poll shows that 80 per cent of Canadians believe the science — that GHG emissions are greatly damaging our environment. Building North America’s longest runway and enabling the growth of GHG emissions flies in the face of the evidence and will make it more difficult to meet Canadians’ demands to address climate change.

The YYC’s argument runs something like this: We need bigger runways for bigger airplanes so that we can take longer trips to more destinations in bigger planes. But in his 2006 book Heat: How to Stop the Planet from Burning, journalist George Monbiot demonstrates that one long airplane trip expends all of an individual’s yearly GHG allowance (assuming we are to meet the 80 per cent target) with no room left for your car, heating and electricity for your house, or getting those fresh fruits and veggies shipped from all over the planet. Aviation’s share of GHG emissions may be relatively small, but it is growing faster than any other sector. A successful climate change strategy will require all sectors to be in reduction mode.

Economically, the larger picture is about the 20th century’s mantra of accelerating economic growth, the delusion that it can go on forever with a planning model that starts with the assumption that the future will be just like the past. We disagree! The future is likely to be radically different from the past. In the 21st century there’s a new reality: peak oil, peak water, peak food and, yes, peak air travel. The era of exponential growth is flatlining.

Jeff Rubin, economist and author of Why Your World is About to Get a Whole Lot Smaller, wrote last week that “We are now living in a world of triple digit oil prices. The massive changes this compels won’t be limited to regime change in the Middle East.” We have found no evidence that YYC planners have taken any of this information into account in the assessment of the financial risk of its $2.5-billion expansion.

The endgame of the discussions of sustainability — the social, political and cultural challenge — is the difficult part.

In Monbiot’s blunt assessment, “Long-distance travel, high speed and the curtailment of climate change are not compatible. If you fly, you destroy other people’s lives.” We’re guilty too, having logged more than our share of air miles over the past 20 years. But collectively we need to find a substitute for the adventure, pleasure and sense of freedom that makes air travel so seductive.

The Calgary Airport Authority operates at the pleasure of the citizens of Alberta and is governed by the Airport Authority Act. Yet this quasi-governmental authority, not beholden to voters, remains aloof in this debate and has not presented its case for public scrutiny.

It’s a case of the tail wagging the dog, with Calgarians left to deal with the aftermath of higher taxes and higher airport fees. YYC is a great operation managed by competent professionals. But the runway expansion is a bad idea underpinned by faulty assumptions. We don’t need the runway because, in the long run, it makes the city less sustainable and less resilient and diverts funds from other, better uses.

If a modern passenger jet operated with the same faulty radar as YYC seems to have, they would never clear it for takeoff.

Geoff Ghitter teaches urban studies at the University of Calgary. geeessgee.blogspot.com. Noel Keough is an assistant professor in the faculty of environmental design at the university, and is co-founder of Sustainable Calgary Society. nkeough@ucalgary.ca.