Heathrow Third Runway

I don't understand what all this fuss about the third runway is about. Surely everyone knows Heathrow is a crowded airport, we all been on planes just waiting to land or at least seen planes kind off queuing up in the sky from a distance. So if it helps to clear this congestion and of course the waste of fuel while waiting then why not build another runway?

Of course there will be more noise and trouble for a few, but then as Chanakya mentioned in his book on war strategy 'Kautalya Arthshastra', it is right to destroy an individual for the benefit of the society and a society for the benefit of the nation, they have to make some sacrifices. Of course this great nation would not have been what it is today if we kept saying no to every development and if it was not for the sacrifices made by many.

Of course, we need to take care of the environment, but aren't we overdoing it a bit at the moment? These are times when the government should crank up spending and if needed build 'roads to nowhere', as the Japanese did, just to keep the economy going and here we are opposing a venture which will provide 60,000 jobs during the construction phase itself and many more after that. We should also not forget how much business it will provide to the hundreds of companies which will be associating in the building of this new runway and the terminal.

We can't carry on gloating about the golden era we had and what a great nation we were, you just need to see the new terminal at the Dubai airport to understand how backward our airports and terminals are. We can't just ignore the development happening in India and China.

How long would we be able to fool the world by saying "Chinese Olympics will be the last of these type of games and our Olympics will be all about legacy", isn't the truth we can't compete with the Chinese and blindly hoping the world wouldn't notice. I have noticed similar sentiments when India successfully launched their moon mission 'Chandrayaan' and planted their flag on the moon, instead of talking about having our own moon mission we are trying to fool ourselves by saying "India should feed their hungry first before launching rockets to moon".

My point is if we oppose every development idea on the name of the environment there will come a time when we would be the ones who would have to feed the hungry and for that green fields and trees might not be enough.