The headlines might tell you that BAA won a victory at the high court this morning. But the reality is that Mrs Justice Swift granted the airport operator a very limited version of what had been sought. Her scorn for the terms of the original injunction was barely disguised as she threw out (at the request of the mayor of London) any reference to banning people from the Piccadilly line. She also dismissed the notion that a piece of legislation designed to protect individual women from stalkers could be used against five million members of organisations as diverse as Greenpeace, RSPB and the National Trust.

So what has BAA achieved? Anyone who does trespass or block airport access will face stiffer penalties, sure. But the camp will go ahead, with far more campers and far more media interest than its organisers could ever have thought possible. Far more people up and down the country will hear the message that expanding the UK's airports is the surest way to wreck our hopes of tackling climate change. The growth in emissions from this sector is set to wipe out gains in every other part of the economy - there simply aren't any techno-fixes that can reduce aviation's carbon emissions fast enough to offset the growth in flights.

AirportWatch does not engage in direct action; it shares the aims but not the methods of groups such as Plane Stupid. But you would certainly sympathise with direct activists if, like me, you spent half your time reading scientific papers that predict impending climatic meltdown in sober analytical language, and the other half lobbying civil servants over tiny changes to a fundamentally unsustainable airport policy. And you'd certainly sympathise if, like the residents of west London, you had been repeatedly lied to about the relentless growth of your neighbour from hell.

Today's ruling may have granted a few extra policing powers to BAA. But it has rebuffed its efforts to stifle legitimate protest and turned the spotlight on its climate-busting expansion plans. A recent ICM poll showed that 60% of the population now opposes airport expansion on climate change grounds. That change in public opinion has partly been achieved by high-profile direct actions, and partly by the steady messaging from highly respectable groups to the swathes of middle England that make up their membership. When activists and birdwatchers are united in their demands, it's time for the government, and BAA, to start listening.