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Can They Coexist?
Airports and Cities: Can They Coexist?
As high-speed global commerce expands, and demand for air transport explodes, airports and cities are invading each-other's space in increasingly hazardous ways. The conventional response is simply to keep expanding airport capacity. But more imaginative solutions are now needed.
"Some people think the world is flat," says the voice on the phone-a voice I have listened to many times in the past year.
At first I hear this as a comment on myopic worldviews, but then I realize it's not just a figure of speech. The man I'm listening to, Jim Starry, is being droll. He really is talking about geometry. But he's not referring to sailors who once worried that their ships might sail off the world's edge. He's ruminating about the people who build airports. Their runways are flat, and to Starry, a Colorado-based ecological designer, this doesn't make sense. A flat runway forces the 425-ton jet that is landing on it to throw its engines into reverse and burn a huge amount of fuel to come to a stop, he says. Imagine, instead, a landing strip that is slightly inclined-so that as the plane touches down it decelerates by rolling up a 2- to 3-percent grade.
Imagine that the plane, too, has been given a couple of key design changes. First, just before touch-down, a set of electric motors begins pre-rotating the wheels so that when the plane lands it won't encounter the huge, rubber-pulverizing friction that occurs when a motionless wheel hits pavement at 130 miles per hour. Then, as wing lift is transformed to wheel load, these electric motors begin functioning as generators, using the forward momentum of the plane the way a hydroelectric plant uses a river current. By tapping the energy of the plane's momentum, they slow the plane-without any further reliance on fuel to produce reverse thrust-and recharge the batteries that will later power them as motors at take-off. As the plane rolls up the incline, the gravity-assisted braking brings it to a halt directly atop a 3-kilometer-long, multi-story terminal. Unlike a conventional landing, which typically ends at a place that necessitates a 10-minute, jet-powered crawl to a distant gate, this plane needs only to roll under battery power for a half-minute or so to a gate where its passengers can alight directly into the building below. When it's time to depart, the plane heads back down the other side of the incline, relying initially on its electric motors for acceleration, then switching on its turbines as the slope gently rounds to a level stretch for liftoff.
Supposing such changes are technically feasible, what would be achieved? First, if the plane is a typical Boeing 747, about 4,000 kilograms less jet fuel would be burned for each landing and takeoff-roughly 300 gallons of fuel for deceleration, 300 for takeoff, and 300-plus for all the taxiing around large expanses of tarmac in between. (Building the runway like an elongated highway overpass, with the terminal underneath it, would eliminate miles of taxiways and cut down on the airport's use of land, as well as of fuel.) This adds up quickly, because a typical major airport accommodates around 1,000 flights a day-meaning a potential daily savings of close to 1 million gallons of fuel from that airport alone. There would also be a substantial reduction of noise, which has become a cause of rising tensions as growing cities and their airports become jammed closer and closer together in the same space.
These differences could turn out to be critical, because airports-often celebrated for their futuristic architecture and technology-have turned out to be surprisingly damaging in their effects on human and ecological health, and in the past few years their impacts have taken a turn for the worse. In the first two minutes after a 747 takes off, it emits as much air pollution as 3,000 cars, says a study by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). People living or working near airports have been found to suffer sharply increased rates of psychological impairment, degenerative illness, and mortality. Hundreds of grassroots groups now say it's time to rethink the way we let these giant machines roar in and out of our populated areas.
An Obsolescent Mindset
Jim Starry isn't just talking about a new kind of runway. To him, the whole mindset that has created the modern major-hub airport doesn't make sense. It's a mindset based on an almost never-questioned assumption-that the solution to rapidly increasing demand for air travel is to provide an ever-increasing supply of land, fuel, and air space. As a result, in its total impact on climate, ecology, and health, today's mega-airport may be one of the most ill-conceived forms of large-scale infrastructure humankind has ever devised-yet it is also one of the least accountable.
Moreover, airports are both multiplying and expanding at a breathtaking rate. In the past few years, huge new airports have appeared all over the world-from Denver to Abu Dhabi to Bangkok. Constructing such an airport is not on the same scale as building a new office tower or highway; it's more like building a city. In China, 18 new airports are under construction and another 21 will have been built by 2005. In Mexico, 20 new airports are planned just for the Baja peninsula. Major airport expansions, which in some respects create even more urban strains than new "green fields" airports carved out of virgin land, are underway in hundreds of cities or suburbs. In the United States alone, the recently enacted Airport Reform and Investment Act for the 21st Century (so-called AIR-21) will subsidize runway expansions or additions at 2,000 airports. New York's heavily congested La Guardia, for example, will increase its capacity by 600 flights per day. And in much of Asia, the pressure to expand is even greater. By 1998, Manila's Ninoy Aquino Airport was operating at twice the capacity it was designed for, and Taipei's Kaohsiung Airport at over three times capacity. Several Pacific Rim governments have embarked on a kind of airport arms race, as they attempt not only to accommodate skyrocketing traffic, but to establish their respective claims to having the pre-eminent "hub" airport of the region.
As Starry ruminates, I become conscious of a distinction I hadn't much thought about before-the difference between air travel and airports. Over the past decade or so, air transport has been increasingly recognized as an environmental threat. It accounts for an estimated 13 percent of the world's carbon dioxide emissions from all transportation sources, and its emissions of this primary greenhouse gas are expected to grow sharply in the years ahead. Moreover, carbon dioxide combined with other exhaust gases and particulates emitted from jet engines could have two to four times as great an impact on the atmosphere as CO2 emissions alone, says a recent U.S. government study. Jet contrails have also been implicated in the development of enormous heat-trapping clouds, which may be escalating the planes' impacts on climate. The exhaust from a single plane may spread to cover as much as 34,000 square kilometers (13,000 square miles). For each passenger on a trans-Pacific flight, about a ton of CO2 is added to the earth's atmosphere. By 2050, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the contribution by contrails may be almost twice as large as the contribution from aircraft CO2.
But Jim Starry notes that jets are at their worst, by far, when they are on the ground-landing, idling, getting de-iced, taxiing, or taking off. Because airports are designed as they are, most airplanes spend a large part of their working life doing those things. At Denver International, for example, up to 23 planes may be running at "high idle" simultaneously, waiting for takeoff, and some wait up to 40 minutes. In the air, planes produce all that CO2 because they're burning fuel so prodigiously. On the ground, jet engines operate at extremely poor efficiency and the fuel is burned very incompletely. Instead of being converted to energy, vapor, and carbon dioxide, huge amounts of fuel are blown into the ground-level air in the form of carbon particulates and volatile organic compounds (VOCs). Starry thinks airports could be designed so that the bulk of that low-efficiency combustion-and pollution-is eliminated.
When he first suggested this, I was reflexively skeptical. To begin with, Starry didn't have the credentials one would like to see from someone who's about to challenge a dominant system. He's always been an outsider-a pilot who has flown thousands of hours, to be sure, and a technician who did some inventive work designing high-altitude balloon launching devices for the National Science Foundation's National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). But Starry has never been a prominent player in the world of aeronautic or architectural engineering. It took me a while to decide that this aptly named man might not be just another of those hyper-educated dreamers who live in the twilight between technology and society, trying haplessly to provide world-changing solutions. Eventually, though, I realized he might be on to something I'd been largely oblivious to. When I'm in an airport, I'm in a kind of twilight zone of my own, my thoughts dwelling on either the place I'm coming from or the place I'm going to. The airport itself doesn't seem quite real. But as I listen to Starry, my focus shifts.
Pollution in High Places
Starry tells me about Denver International Airport (DIA)-a subject he returns to again and again in our conversations. When the site was being prepared in the early 1990s, the amount of soil bulldozed off the prairie could have filled a building 10 feet high, 20 feet wide, and 3,000 miles long. The ostensible reason for constructing DIA was to replace Denver's Stapleton Airport, where air traffic was projected to explode from around 35 million passengers in 1985 to 100 million in the early 21st century. During the five years after this rationale was first offered, Stapleton's traffic declined by 5 million passengers, but the new airport was built anyway. Today, instead of driving 11 kilometers (7 miles) from downtown Denver to Stapleton, people drive 57 kilometers (32 miles) to DIA. Denver officials estimated that the amount of air pollution generated by the new airport and its added traffic was six to eight times what had been generated before. And this project was not unique. What happened in Colorado is now beginning to happen all over the world. Seoul's new Incheon Airport is about 60 kilometers from downtown, as are the two international airports outside Buenos Aires. Kuala Lumpur International is 66 kilometers out.
Watching the building of DIA got Jim Starry to thinking more seriously about the old assumption that the only satisfaction for fast-rising demand is a rising supply. He saw manifestations of this assumption on several fronts of our globalizing economy. In the energy industry, the impulse is to drill for more oil, rather than to use existing supplies much more efficiently. In waste management, the impulse is to find more space to dump. In housing, it's to develop more land, rather than design for higher density on the land already claimed for human use. All these impulses are vestiges of pioneer times, when it was always possible to find more resources by moving on-opening up new territory.
Airports epitomize all three of these resource fronts: they consume land, energy, and dumping capacity at rates rarely equaled anywhere else. Denver is a telling case, because as one of the world's newest mega-airports, it was supposed to be among the most efficient. But instead, DIA seems to have set new standards for excessive consumption. It covers 138 square kilometers (53 square miles), which makes it twice the size of New York City's Manhattan Island. It has greatly increased the region's overall oil consumption; it has increased the time and money travelers spend even before they get on their planes (it has one of the worst on-time records in the nation); and it has accelerated Denver's spread over the Colorado prairie.
As Starry speaks, I'm well aware that this is the kind of thing many people don't like to hear. I'm listening because it's my job to try to keep track of such things. But I'm acutely conscious that we environmentalists have failed, so far, in our mission to halt the accelerating degradation of the planet. In the 30 years since the first Earth Day, every major trend has worsened on a global level. And now I'm hearing about something we have never paid much attention to, because it hasn't fallen into our conventional environmental categories. We study cities and suburbs, agricultural land and wildlife habitat. But airports aren't really any of these. We study green building techniques, but those techniques usually focus on houses and hotels and office buildings, not airports. We've studied the contribution of jet aircraft to air pollution as a function of miles traveled, but not as a result of landing and idling and taking off. Yet, we know these ground-level effects are substantial. Gar Smith, of the Earth Island Institute, reports that in the first five minutes of flight, a commercial airliner burns-turns to CO2-as much oxygen as 17,000 hectares (44,000 acres) of forest produce in a day.
But even more significant than what the plane burns is what it poisons. Studies of neighborhoods near airports such as Chicago's O'Hare and Seattle's Sea-Tac have shown that jet exhaust is subjecting residents to extremely high concentrations of the carcinogens benzene formaldehyde and 1,3-butadiene, and at least 200 other toxic compounds. According to Jack Saporito, president of the Chicago-based U.S. Citizens Aviation Watch, these studies also indicate that significant increases in cancer risk are found among people living near airports with as few as 15 jet flights per day, yet most major cities launch hundreds, and some of them-where there's more than one major airport-launch thousands.
Of course, many of those flights-and their accompanying cargo-have brought important benefits. They've helped bring the world together. But in replacing no-man's lands with busy tarmac, they've brought a new set of threats. For the sake of mental neatness, I divide these threats into five broad categories, though in truth they're not entirely separable-it's a little like trying to separate the risks of overeating, underexercising, smoking, and breathing polluted air in a man who's a heart-attack-waiting-to-happen.
Land Consumption: The Biggest Sprawl of All
Chicago's O'Hare Airport sits on the site of former apple orchards. The St. Louis airport was once soybean fields. DIA is where winter wheat was once grown. China's Macau International spans two ecologically sensitive wetlands. You'd think that as the human population expands, and development consumes more and more of the world's remaining open land, airport planners would design with increasing efficiency. Instead, as old airports add new runways, planners continue to use the same basic principles they've always used; and new airports tend to be more sprawling than the old. Denver's new DIA is 50 times the size of New York's old La Guardia, though they carry comparable traffic. The new Kuala Lumpur International, when finished, will be 30 times the area of the old Osaka Itami. Germany's new Munich Franz Josef Straus is 5 times the area of Norway's old Oslo Gardermoen.
The problem is not just that these huge projects cut sharply into each country's declining environmental assets; they also disrupt existing infrastructure, which increases the pressure on the surrounding environment still further. The impending expansion of Lambert-St. Louis International, for example, will bulldoze one-fifth of the adjoining neighborhood of Bridgeton, wiping out 2,000 houses. If the relocation of those houses' residents follows recent U.S. patterns, their new homes will take up even more land than the airport is taking from them, as they move farther out to larger, cheaper tracts.
Air Pollution: Autos and Airplanes
For the moment, disregard the emissions of airplanes in flight. Consider just what happens at ground level. According to the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), a Boeing 747 spends an average of 32 minutes landing, taxiing, and taking off. In that time, it can generate 87 kilograms of nitrogen oxides (NOx)-equivalent to over 85,000 kilometers of automobile emissions. In a major international airport, with 1,000 flights a day, that would come to 87 metric tons of NOx a day, or roughly the amount that might be produced by all the cars in a city of 2 or 3 million people. NOx, of course, is one of the principal precursors of smog.
Of course, not all of the planes in a big airport are 747s, so actual NOx totals should be smaller. And indeed, a 1995 survey conducted by NRDC, in which U.S. airports offered their own estimates, reported NOx emissions topping out at around 5 tons a day for a major airport-though it should be noted that this figure is based only on the data from those airports that responded, which included fewer than half of those contacted. Still, 5 tons equals the NOx output of close to 5 million kilometers (about 3 million miles) of automobile driving, and the average number of flights handled by a major airport appears likely to have tripled from its 1995 level by 2010. As population growth and globalization continue to drive up air traffic, while competing demands for land continue to
narrow the ground-level bottlenecks through which all this traffic must flow, the amount of idling and taxiing time is likely to grow well beyond that 32-minute average. It is during this idling and taxiing that fuel efficiency is poorest, so as traffic rises, pollution can be expected to rise even faster.
Public knowledge of what happens to our air in airports has been blocked not only by a lack of any systematic monitoring, but sometimes also by a lack of candor about the meaning of the few measurements that are made. Consider, for example, the role of particulate matter (PM) measurements in the approval of Denver International. When DIA was being designed, its particulate matter emissions were projected by using a "PM10" standard which counted all the particles that are 10 microns in diameter or larger (a micron is one-millionth of a meter). According to Gerald Rapp, a chemical engineer who works as an air quality consultant, 99 percent of the particulates spewed out by jet engines are smaller than 10 microns, meaning that the actual PM output was up to 100 times worse than the measurements suggested. "A 10-micron particle is a boulder," Rapp told me. "What's important biologically, for human health, are the really small ones. Tobacco smoke is a tenth to a quarter of one micron."
When DIA was first proposed, the city of Denver opposed it. In 1983, the city residents elected a new mayor, Federico Peña, who had said he saw no reason why a new airport was needed. "In terms of access, convenience, and land-use impacts, development of a new regional airport represents an inferior choice," he said. A study by the city projected that with the huge increase in car driving it would bring, DIA would generate 224 tons of air pollution per day, including NOx, PM, unburned hydrocarbons, and carbon monoxide. This projection did not include carbon dioxide, since global warming had not yet arrived as a political issue.
Shortly after he was elected, however, Peña became an enthusiastic DIA booster. He championed the project with federal authorities, who were interested in supporting a model project to show how new airports could improve urban air quality by dissipating the pollution-by moving the flight paths farther from cities. And the particulate projections for Denver neatly supported that idea. By not measuring the smaller-than-10-micron particles, and disregarding the emissions from the 33 million passenger-miles of daily airport commuting, Peña would later be able to claim that his project had cleaned up the air in Denver, which in a narrow sense it had. But for the region as a whole, DIA made the air worse. Nonetheless, Peña's claim of success helped catapult him into the job of U.S. Secretary of Transportation in the Clinton administration, and DIA, in turn, became a model for airport building around the world.
Water Pollution: Off the Edge of the Tarmac
In the United States, little has been written about the impacts of airports on the surrounding land and water, in part because of the aforementioned "neither-here-nor-there" quality of such projects, and in part because only one major new urban airport (DIA) has been built in the United States since the enactment of the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, which made environmental assessments mandatory. While a number of "regional" airports have been built since then, their more rural locations have allowed their environmental assessments to largely escape public notice.
In the assessment for Denver International, it seems there was never any doubt that the project would be approved. In the 550-page book Denver International Airport: Lessons Learned, by Paul Stephen Dempsey (McGraw-Hill, 1997), the first reference to any environmental issue appears in this sentence: "By late summer 1989, the first federal funding installment ($60 million) was received, the FAA approved the final environmental impact statement, and groundbreaking on the project occurred on September 28, 1989." (Italics added.) The book includes little mention of environmental issues involving DIA, and none at all of water pollution.
For Jim Starry, this is a dumbfounding omission. "Look at what happened with de-icing," he says. "When ice forms on planes, as happens often in Colorado, workers remove it with ethylene glycol. At Stapleton, they were using 51 million gallons a year, and most of it ran off into the ground." By then, Starry had left NCAR and was running his own environmental design firm. When city officials invited him to present his design ideas for the proposed new airport, he suggested building a set of containment ponds to catch the ethylene glycol for recycling. The idea was adopted, though he was never either credited for it or paid for his consulting. (Bill Smith, the assistant mayor who invited him, died before the project got underway, and his successor seems to have pushed Starry out of the picture.) After the ponds were built and the airport began operation, however, a curious thing happened. According to Starry, one of the owners of a major airline company that was being heavily courted by DIA (none of the major carriers wanted the new airport), was also the contractor who had been selling ethylene glycol to Stapleton. At DIA, with the ponds catching the fluid for recycling, there was no need to buy so much of it-until one day the ponds were fitted with a 3-foot-diameter pipe that carried the used antifreeze about two miles and dumped it into Barr Lake.
"Now, you can fish in Barr Lake year-round, even when all the other lakes in Colorado are frozen," says Starry. He pauses thoughtfully. "But you won't catch any fish."
DIA's antifreeze management, it seems, was not atypical. In the mid-1990s, U.S. Citizens Aviation Watch (US-CAW) sued Baltimore-Washington Airport (BWI) for allowing its de-icing chemicals to enter an aquifer from which the people of Anne Arundel County get their drinking water. In Michigan, state environmental officials recently cited Wayne County for allowing ethylene glycol from Metro Airport to be discharged into a drain that empties into the Detroit River. And it's not just in de-icing country that airports pose threats to water quality. In Florida, Miami-Dade County has just filed the largest environmental lawsuit in the state's history, citing American Airlines, Delta Airlines, and 15 other companies for dumping airplane fuel, solvents, and other toxic chemicals into the ground around Miami International Airport, where they have seeped into the county's only drinking water source. But so far, the problem of airports leaking or dumping their multifarious fluids has remained largely below the radar-so to speak-of public scrutiny. Saporito notes that US-CAW won its suit against BWI, but the contamination continues. Holding tanks are still leaking ethylene glycol and other chemicals into the aquifer, and people in Maryland continue to drink it.
Noise: The Psychological Pollution
The scream of jets-of fuel igniting and turbine blades striking the air as planes take off-has become the most noticeable of the environmental impacts of airports worldwide, for obvious reasons. Whereas the effects of contaminated air or water may take years to emerge, airplane noise produces instant irritation. As both cities and airports expand, more and more people find themselves living under the flight paths of ascending jets. Only in the past decade have planners begun to react. In the Netherlands, for example, a 1979 study found that 42,000 homes were being subjected to severe noise from Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport, and in 1990 Schiphol adopted a plan to reduce the impact by noise-insulating some houses and relocating others, and by curtailing night operations. At Paris's Orly, a night curfew has been imposed, and noisier aircraft are required to pay higher taxes. In at least a few places (Osaka, Hong Kong, Seoul), officials have mitigated both noise and land scarcity by filling coastal wetlands or bays so that flight paths go over water instead of homes.
In the United States, where suburbanization has caused the most extensive friction, irritation over noise has spurred the formation of scores of grassroots groups opposing airport expansion projects. In Seattle, a citizens' group called the Regional Commission on Airport Affairs has mobilized to stop the building of a third runway at Sea-Tac Airport, claiming that "the only plan for mitigation of noise from the new runway is to buy more nearby houses," and that "this provides no relief for the tens of thousands who will be newly exposed to overflight noise in neighborhoods miles from the airport." In California, a group called Citizens Against Airport Pollution (CAAP) is suing to stop expansion of San Jose International Airport because the project "would cause traffic gridlock and lead to more air and noise pollution." Similar groups have formed to fight noise at New York's La Guardia, Chicago's O'Hare, Los Angeles International, and St. Louis's Lambert-St. Louis International, among others. It was a national coalition of such groups that gave rise to Saporito's organization, which now has 1.5 million members. "There are expansion plans coming up everywhere, and you just can't roll over the objecting communities anymore," says Dennis McGram, who heads a national coalition called NOISE-the National Organization to Insure a Sound-controlled Environment.
Impacts on Health
There's a NOMBYish (not over my back yard) quality to the political battles being fought over airports and their adjacent communities; many people like the commercial boost an airport can bring, and like the convenience of having ready access to air travel-but don't want planes roaring over their homes. Many of the battles have featured accusations by one neighborhood that it is being used as a dumping ground for noise being diverted from another, more politically connected and vocal neighborhood. "They Complain, We Get the Planes!" read one recent website headline. "How Our Neighbors to the North Screwed Us," said another. In some cases the tug-of-war has become an environmental justice issue, with flight paths tending to be located over the city's poorest neighborhoods. But in the long run, these local concerns may be subsumed by a more pervasive one: the emerging realization that airports may affect the health of anyone living within about a 20-mile radius. In the United States today, 70 percent of the population lives within 20 miles of a major airport.
As reported by Sharon Skolnick of the Earth Island Institute, the State of Washington's Health Department Census, which compared 1991-1995 health data for people living near SeaTac Airport with those of Seattle residents overall, found that "infant mortality near the airport was 50 percent greater, heart disease was 57 percent greater, cancer deaths were 36 percent greater." For people living near the airport, overall life expectancy was found to be 5.6 years shorter. That's not to say we know airport-generated pollution was the cause (or more likely one of several causes), but it suggests that far more attention to that possibility is now warranted. In Chicago, a similar pattern was found, as people living near O'Hare Airport had cancer rates 70 percent higher than those for Chicago overall.
One of the newer and more alarming findings concerns the effects of noise. Apparently, the complaints of groups like NOISE are not just matters of frayed nerves or disrupted sleep. In Germany, when the new Munich airport went into operation, a study of third- and fourth-grade children living in the flight path found significant increases in blood pressure and stress hormones, compared with a similar group of children living in the same area before the airport began operation. "These hormones are linked to adult illnesses, some of which are life-threatening, including high blood pressure, elevated lipids and cholesterol, heart disease, and reduction in the body's supply of disease-fighting immune cells," noted the report.
The Munich study, conducted by the Cornell University College of Human Ecology, also found that the children subjected to flight-path noise did not learn to read as well, because they tended to tune out speech. "This is probably the most definitive proof that noise causes stress and is harmful to humans," said Gary Evans, a professor of design and environmental analysis at Cornell.
The Physics of Catching a Ball
Listening to Jim Starry talk about ethylene glycol in Barr Lake, I feel a certain frustration, because I have come to empathize with the public reaction: "Everything causes cancer now, and everything is killing the environment. What can I do about it?" I sense that Starry is frustrated too, but not because of a lack of solutions. He has a solution that makes intuitive sense and is clearly worth pursuing-getting funding for feasibility studies, and perhaps pilot projects-but people aren't taking it seriously.
I question him more closely about his central concept-the inclined runway. Has the idea ever been tried?
He laughs. "Lots of airports have runways that are inclined because that was just the lay of the land when they built them," he says. "Telluride, Colorado has a 4-percent grade. Aspen has a 112-foot dip. Oh, yes-a big airport in Nepal has a 15-percent incline. We've just never done it on purpose, taken advantage of what it could save in fuel, if we did it systematically."
How about the pilots? Do they have a problem with it?
"No. But pilots are not allowed to have input into runway design. Pilots would actually find it easier, because as you land, you can see the whole runway ahead, like when you're driving and you see the road ahead going up a hill. On a flat, the heat waves often distort visibility-you get that shimmer, and sometimes you can't see all the way down the runway."
He recalls the time a captain at Gurnsy airbase in Wyoming invited him to video a C130 landing on an incline. It went smoothly, although Starry was so transfixed by what he was seeing through the camera that he almost got run over by the plane.
What about the terminal? I understand that having the runway pass over it eliminates most of the taxiing, but are there any other advantages-or disadvantages?
"Think again about the de-icing," he replies. "With the whole airport complex built under the runways, the fuel could be kept underground, at 58 degrees. Instead of filling the wing tanks with fuel that's been stored in freezing trucks, it would go into the planes warm, so the wings would usually have no need to be de-iced in the first place. Then think of ice on the runway. The heat radiating from the terminal's roof melts the ice on the runway overhead, which is good for safety. Then there's the energy conservation of a complex where all the buildings are combined into one, and where it's all insulated by earthen embankment. The whole airport could be built on one-third the land, at one-half the cost, with lower operating cost, and a cleaner environment-which also means the airlines and other airport-related businesses could operate a lot more profitably. It's like designing a city, really; the more compact design is more energy-efficient, more materials-efficient, and more pleasant to be in."
Starry has clearly thought this concept through, and I feel a growing curiosity about its implications. As an editor at Worldwatch, I've long been wary of technological solutions to problems caused primarily by poor judgement or confused values. There are the sobering lessons we've learned about pesticides-the 1950s PR photos of kids smiling happily as they play, free of fear from mosquitos, in a protective cloud of DDT. There's the PR mail I get every week or so from Los Alamos National Laboratory, about its latest proposed technological fix for humankind. But Starry's proposal intrigues me, not because it's new technology but because it seems to be a more intelligent way of using techniques we humans have had all along. I wondered how long it has been since Homo sapiens has known how to cup his hand to catch a ball instead of trying to catch it with the hand held flat.
But if his concept has real potential, why don't people listen? Starry is a gentle person, and doesn't like to blame. He prefers to say the problem is that no-one is in charge of the airport system, and it turns out there's some truth in this. On a micro level, someone controls every movement-the air traffic controllers directing the planes in the air, the security guards monitoring your luggage and your pockets. But on a macro level, when it comes to planning and building, there seems to be no place where the buck stops. In the United States, FAA guidelines tell builders to limit runways to a maximum slope of 1.58 percent, but no-one seems to be able to explain why. It's like the "least common denominator" standards of product safety or quality in commerce, which provide a level playing field for all jurisdictions, but which some jurisdictions complain about because it may prevent them from adopting their own, higher, standards. Airplane pilots, wherever they may be landing, understandably like some degree of uniformity in runway design. And because airports are used by all nations, governments can't impose unilateral regulations on them to the extent they might on their strictly domestic operations. So airport administrations have become worlds unto themselves-quasi-independent, and fully accountable to no-one. I find myself wondering if this lack of accountability isn't a manifestation of the same mental compartmentalization that shackles so much of our thinking-so that, for example, public health agencies enforce no-smoking rules in airport terminals, but have no say in runway design, which may account for vastly larger differences in the amounts of carcinogens to which people in airports are subjected. According to NCAR, each gallon of jet fuel burned pollutes over 8,400 gallons of air to a level of toxicity that would be dangerous, if not lethal, to breathe. The only reason we're not seeing it kill anyone is that it's so rapidly dispersed through the atmosphere. But how long can a finite atmosphere continue to absorb it?
In any case, jet pollution isn't regulated the way car exhaust is. In the United States, legal loopholes have left airports exempt from either reporting to the Toxic Release Inventory or regulation under the Clean Air Act. And when U.S. Aviation Watch sued Baltimore-Washington International for its contamination of drinking water, Saporito says that "EPA was so out-of-the-loop that they had to come to us to find out what was going on. That's scary."
The Boy Who Flew Backward ... But Remembered to Keep Looking Ahead
Still, it seems that the biggest reason why people don't pay attention to the environmental damage done by large airports-and to the kind of remedies proposed by people like Jim Starry-is neither administrative buck-passing nor corruption. Rather, it's that blind spot about supply-side solutions. For most people, airport dysfunction still seems to be just a matter of passenger crowding and delays. Even in terms of passenger capacity, the usual view is narrow-considering only how to expand the numbers of runways and flights, not how to either reduce demand or make supply more energy- and land-efficient.
Two recent accounts illustrate this tunnel vision. A 2000 Consumer Reports review of U.S. airports, ostensibly considering all major factors in consumers' interests, concludes that the solution is to build more outlying airports. Noting that 635 million passengers flew on U.S. carriers in 1999, with a projected increase to 1 billion by 2010, the authors argue that the answer is "public policy that equitably provides easier access to the skies," and that as new airports are planned for locations farther and farther from city centers, "the increasing availability of alternative arrival and departure points for air travel doesn't come a moment too soon."
A front page article in USA Today (September 12, 2000) comes to essentially the same conclusion. "Can gridlock be cured by expanding airports?" asks the headline. And a sub-head answers: "Using alternative sites may be a better solution." The story goes on to suggest that the money being spent to add new runways to large hub airports would be better invested by building more new airports in outlying areas "where land is cheaper and the population more welcoming." Both publications thus echo the prevailing 19th-century notion that the way to get rid of any kind of congestion-whether of people, traffic, or waste-is simply to remove it to a more open space.
But this is the same primrose path that led to suburban sprawl. By looking only at the profitability of new tracts, versus the redesign of cities, we missed the costs of destroying habitat, paving over farmland, increasing per capita energy consumption, and so on. But the proliferation of new runways and access roads isn't just a parallel phenomenon; it's an escalation of sprawl. New airports almost invariably mean major new roads and additional developments along those roads.
Breaking this kind of vicious circle will require looking at efficiency not just in the narrow way airlines do when they try to fly without empty seats, but in the broad way that considers how much energy is consumed by the whole system. An airport that reduces congestion on the runways and in the air by moving out from the city isn't necessarily more efficient if it requires hundreds of millions of passenger miles of added driving each year, as does DIA. A project that makes people use more energy may boost local business and add to GNP, but ecologically it moves us backwards.
Jim Starry says he knows what it's like to fly backwards-and it's a scary feeling. Here, again, he's not speaking figuratively. One time when he was in high school, he deliberately slowed the plane he was flying-a J3 cub that he and a friend had rebuilt-to stalling speed, as part of a training exercise. The stalling speed of the J3 is 30 miles per hour. Flying into a head-wind of 50 miles per hour, "I was actually flying backwards at 20 mph," he recalls. "I was 18 years old-what can I say?" Now older and more circumspect, he doesn't like the idea of unnecessary risk on either a personal or societal level. There are better ways to find thrills, and one of the best is to allow for more imaginative, more out-of-the-box thinking about how to solve some of the world's most threatening problems.
Starry's solutions don't solve the problem of sprawl, but they help to redirect consciousness in an important way. They show that innovative design-in runways, terminals, and airplanes-can provide non-destructive substitutes for new jet fuel supplies or numbers of flights. In doing so, they may also help attune us to the idea that airport design is becoming an increasingly important part of the larger issue of urban design. That, in turn, is critical to determining how our increasingly congested and restless human population can adapt successfully to the limitations of its fast-shrinking planet.
Ed Ayres is editor of World Watch and editorial director of the Worldwatch Institute.


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Planning a Visit
Our 252-acre campus, spanning the communities of Montclair, Little Falls, and Clifton, is a special place. It has a relaxed, secluded feel, yet is only 30 minutes by train from New York City.
The best way to get a feel for Montclair State is to visit. Our tours are led by students who are happy to share their own experiences at the University. You can also take a virtual tour or participate in one of our open houses.
Campus Tours are led by Student Ambassadors and are offered throughout the academic year. You can opt for a personal tour for you and your family, or join a group tour with other prospective students.
Virtual Tours are the next best thing to being here in person. From the comfort of your own home you can enjoy 360-degree views of some of the iconic spots on campus, from Alumni Green to Panzer Athletic Center, and visit a typical residential hall room.
Undergraduate Open Houses are large-scale events that allow you to get to know lots of other prospective students. Meet faculty members as well as representatives from Admissions, Financial Aid, Athletics, Residence Education, and many more departments.
Graduate Open Houses are held once a semester, usually in October and February. Meet faculty representatives from each of our 85 graduate programs, and ask questions at informative breakout sessions about your particular area of interest. Graduate admissions and financial aid representatives are also on hand.
Transfer and Adult Students Open Houses let you ask questions about the transfer process from admissions counselors, academic advisors, and financial aid specialists. If you're 25 or older and are attending college for the first time, or returning after an absence of two or more years, experts will walk you through the application and enrollment process and alleviate any concerns you may have about returning to the classroom.
Arts Days feature workshops with faculty members from the College of the Arts, performances by talented students, and advice about the University's audition and interview process.
View Directions and Transit Information to our campus.

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Stories by Mousey [1] Series by Mousey [0] Reviews by Mousey [0] Challenges by Mousey [0] Favorite Series [0] Mousey's Favorites [0]Series
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|The authors own nothing. Joss, UPN, WB, etc. own Buffy, the show, the characters, the places, and the backstory. The authors own any original plots.


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Be inspired by our vast collections of South Australian material gathered from colonial times to today. Discover historical photographs, menus, diaries, letters, newspapers, maps, posters and films as well as books and magazines. You will have the unique opportunity to see some original materials close up. This progam includes a 30 minute walking tour of our heritage buildings and a chance to view our current exhibitions.
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The Economic Conundrum of an Aging Population
The Economic Conundrum of an Aging Population
The shift to a stable population will increase the "dependency ratio" of old to young. While that may stem environmental decline, it could bring economic hardship to the countries that first achieve it. The only real chance of escaping this dilemma is to eliminate the huge economic inequities that now prevail in the world.
In a large part of the world, old age is an incentive to have many children. That may seem puzzling to Europeans or Americans, for whom old age can be a welcome escape from the burdens of buying kids' clothes or paying for college tuition. Retired people in affluent countries usually have savings or pensions, as well as government-provided retirement income. But in poor countries, where hundreds of millions of people have no such income after they stop working, adult male children are the equivalent of social security. For this reason, there are strong cultural imperatives for children to provide support for their elderly parents, in preference (if a choice is necessary) to their own young. The result is a combination of too many children and too little care for those children-a potent formula for yet another generation of poorly educated and impoverished young people, including more young men whose frustrations make them prime prospects for militias and terrorists, and young women who have few prospects other than to have more children. It's a self-perpetuating cycle, which ironically becomes harder to break as life expectancies increase and the number of old people in poor countries continues to increase.
Aging Populations Have Fewer Children, But...
The incentives for having fewer children in rich industrialized countries are the mirror image of the reasons for having large families in poor countries. In poor countries, most people live on subsistence farms where child labor is valuable. In rich countries, most people live in cities where children are required by law to go to school. Children are an expensive luxury for people who live in cities and who have jobs outside the home. They must be housed, fed, and schooled. They add nothing to family income. If the mother has a job, she must find (and pay for) a baby-sitter or nanny to look after young children. Urban teenagers are often neglected by working parents, and too many of them-lacking adult guidance-engage in high-risk or costly behavior, from profligate consumption of video games or TV shows exhibiting extreme violence, to unsafe sex, drug-taking, or even crime. If unemployed, children may be an economic burden on parents into their thirties. In Italy, especially, unmarried children have become notoriously inclined to continue to live with their aging parents and enjoy mama's cooking. For that reason, among others, Italy now has one of the lowest birth rates in the world. Some Italians would like to see that trend reversed.
Last fall, The Economist magazine published a story, "Work Longer, Have More Babies." The illustration showed a horrified young woman-presumably in shock over the news that she is expected to stop having fun and start reproducing, for the good of western society. The underlying message, of course, was that as the populations of rich countries get older, with smaller percentages of them of child-bearing age-and as fewer of them care to bear the expense of having kids in any case-the populations of those countries will shrink and their cultures will risk being overrun by others, whose populations are rapidly expanding.
It is true that all of the industrialized countries, including the United States, are aging. The number of old people supported by social security, compared to the number of younger employed people paying into the retirement system, is growing. This "dependency ratio"-the number of people over 65 as a percentage of the number in the 20-24 age group-is a good indicator of the fundamental demographic problem. This ratio is now just over 20 percent for the United States, about 27 percent for the Euro zone, and 28 percent for Japan. However, by 2050, according to the World Bank, the dependency ratio will be close to 46 percent for the United States, 60 percent for Europe, and 70 percent for Japan.
The number of workers supporting each German pensioner today, via the main government "pay-as-you-go" (PAYG) system, is about three. By 2030, if current trends continue, the number of active workers per pensioner will be only 1.5. If each of the active workers earned 100 Euros before the transfer, he (or she) would get to keep 60, and the retiree would also get 60 Euros (1.5 X 100 = 2.5 X 60 = 150). The other costs of government would be taken (via taxation) out of the 60 Euros of income each person has. Costs of government, net of pensions, are at least 25 percent of GDP for industrialized countries, so taxes would take at least 15 Euros from each worker and retiree. The original 100 Euros is therefore down to 45, or less. From that, the future worker must think about saving for his own future retirement when the over-stressed PAYG system collapses, as many people now expect.
A Demographic Dilemma
To an environmentalist, an aging population might seem a good thing-proof that birthrates have fallen and that overall population will stabilize or decline. But a small aging population like that of Italy, in a world of huge younger populations like those of China or Brazil, may not be sustainable. First, there's that pressure from those who don't want their traditional culture (of Italy, or Spain, or France) to be overrun, and who want to encourage their young families to have more children. But even if that weren't a factor, there'd be the economic pressure on a country with a high dependency ratio to alleviate the imbalance, by delaying retirements or reducing retirement benefits. There's also the kind of pressure created by the Bush administration in the United States, to allow active workers to divert part of their social security taxes into privately controlled savings or investment accounts. It's a tempting idea because share prices have increased in value faster than government bonds (in which social security funds are invested), but it would take money away from the PAYG funds available to support current retirees, thus imposing either a very large near-term tax burden or additional government debt to make up the difference.
All things considered, an aging population of non-workers will necessitate an increased tax burden or increased public sector debt, or both. In the past, a few countries have lived with taxes in the 50-percent range, especially in wartime, but not happily. However, this is no longer plausible. In a globalized world with no restrictions on capital flows, where nations compete for investment and where multinational firms can-and do-move money around at the touch of a button, high taxes are a major barrier to investment. In the world of 2030, the United States will be somewhat better off than Europe or Japan, thanks to its lower dependency ratio. On the other hand, China and India will have much lower dependency ratios than the United States, in addition to having lower wages. Even if they had to pay much higher wages, as they must do eventually, those countries would, and will, continue to absorb most of the capital available for investment, including whatever savings the workers of the (formerly) rich countries can manage to divert from current needs.
When environmentalists began to worry about population in the 1970s, the idea that having a declining population could spell trouble for a country might have seemed unimaginable. After all, wasn't that the ultimate goal? But in a globalized economy, a declining national population means a nation with a high percentage of elderly, non-working people will compete against nations of young, productive (often low-wage) people-and lose. The change of perspective since the 1970s can be attributed to three factors.
- First, retirement ages have gotten younger, putting greater burdens on the social security system. According to the European Commission, the average age of retirement in Western Europe was 65 in 1960, but is 60 today. Civil servants and some unionized workers, such as truck drivers, are able to retire considerably earlier. In the United States, the average age of retirement was 66 in 1960, but is down to under 63 today. Moreover, when firms "downsize," which happens with alarming frequency these days, they often do so by offering early retirement schemes to older workers without replacing them with younger ones. This cuts payroll costs and shifts some or all of the burden to the government. Employees who were previously paying into the social security system are suddenly withdrawing funds from the system.
- Meanwhile, birth rates in the industrialized countries have declined, just as environmentalists hoped they would-but with some unforeseen consequences. In 1950, the average overall birth rate in the European union was still above replacement (2 children per woman), at 2.7. Today it is 1.5 and falling. Similar rates are now observed in Japan, China, and Russia. In the United States, the birth rate is just above 2, in part because many of the country's Latino immigrants still prefer large families. If current trends continue, the working-age population of Europe will fall by 18 percent (40 million people) by 2050, while the corresponding U.S. group will increase by a similar amount. In that period the average age of the German population will increase to 54, while the average American will still be only 35. This discrepancy is very disturbing to most European economists, and politicians, who are concerned about economic competition with the United States, not to mention China and India.
- Finally, life expectancies have been increasing since the beginning of the 18th century, and especially fast since the early 19th century. When Thomas Malthus warned of explosive population growth, in 1798, the average life expectancy was probably no more than 35. When Otto von Bismarck introduced the first state pension in Germany in 1889, the average life expectancy was 48, whereas the retirement age was set at 70. No wonder the German PAYG system was fiscally sound when it was introduced. There were a lot of active workers and very few retirees. The ratio was probably more than 100 to 1. Now, of course, the life expectancy of Europeans, Japanese, and Americans alike is around 77 (slightly more for women, slightly less for men) and still rising.
An older population requires more health and other services, and produces less wealth, than a younger population. At least that is the conventional wisdom. What is certain is that existing pension plans and social security programs are in deep trouble, even in the United States, and more so in Europe and Japan.
What Would an Aging Society Be Like?
Imagine a society ruled by the old. College professors, army generals, CEOs, doctors, judges, and legislators would hang on to their jobs into their seventies or eighties, or even longer. Promotion in big corporations, civil service, colleges and universities, and the military officer corps would slow almost to a halt, as vacancies due to retirement become rare. Even poorly paid jobs like teaching children in primary or secondary schools, or nursing, or processing forms in government agencies, would most likely require advanced degrees. Computers already do much of the work formerly done by clerks and middle managers. Computers are learning to talk to each other. The need for human interfaces will continue to decline.
Highly skilled construction, repair, and maintenance jobs, such as heavy machine operation, auto repair, plumbing, masonry, plastering, plumbing, electrical work, and electronics repair, would continue to be important and well-paid. However, many such jobs tend to be passed on from father to son. Union membership would be essentially closed to outsiders. Without an expanding economy to absorb them, young people on the lower rungs of the education ladder would be chronically unemployed-or forced to take jobs that most people are unwilling to do, such as collecting and separating trash or cleaning fish.
It is unlikely that there would be enough such jobs for all. But unemployment, especially among the young, is socially destabilizing. Moreover, it discriminates against ethnic minorities of all kinds. It is not at all unlikely that half or more of the present U.S. prison population-disproportionately black and Hispanic, and the largest in the industrialized world-would never have got into trouble with the law if there had been enough decent job opportunities for the less privileged.
Of course there is nothing new about this situation. It has been with us for a long time. The children of the rich are less likely to steal or commit crimes for money, since they don't need to. If they are caught driving while drunk, or accused of date rape, they will be defended by high-priced lawyers or released on a convenient technicality to avert the expense of a trial without an assured outcome, or worse, the loss of a wealthy campaign contributor. When the rich commit financial crimes that cause vast losses for customers or shareholders, they can afford to hire even more expensive lawyers skilled in the black arts of confusion, obstruction, obfuscation, and delay. Very few millionaire malefactors are convicted, still fewer punished. In the future, as the rich get richer-and older people become more demographically dominant-this sort of inequity will almost surely get worse before it gets better.
One way it's likely to get worse is in access to medical services. The rich can afford services that the poor can only dream of. No matter what the Christian and/or Islamic fundamentalists and their moral police think, and no matter whether it is legal in the United States and other major Christian or Islamic countries, cloning of stem cells from human embryos for therapeutic purposes is on the way. Clinics will soon-probably within a decade-be available in China, Russia, the Ukraine, Armenia, or other countries, where custom-grown livers, kidneys, hearts, lungs, or even legs and arms can be had for a suitably high price. The technology is already well along in development. Demand will surely follow. The more effective the gene therapies and stem cell technologies become, the longer their lucky recipients will live-and block the promotion prospects for younger people.
Given these trends, there is growing risk that the aging society of a mature industrial nation will be an increasingly inequitable society, ruled by the rich (and the old) for their own benefit and perpetuation in power. It will be controlled by means of hired guardians who will perform the same duties as today's police and military, but with added civil powers. Having high unemployment or underemployment, and no real power, the rest of our urban society will inevitably revert to a form of existence analogous to that of the Romans who were kept satisfied and entertained by bread and circuses. Its bread will be junk food and its circuses will be our 200 TV channels and omnipresent movieplexes, as well as our sports stadiums and NASCAR race tracks. But just as Rome was overrun, this self-indulgent senior culture (more toys for 65-year-old boys, with fewer actual children) could well be overrun by needier and more aggressive outsiders.
In a society thus dominated by the old, the young are doubly disadvantaged-by their subordinate positions in the major institutions of society and by their reduced capacity to pay the costs of social security. But the real killer is the fact that these overburdened young Europeans, Americans, or Japanese will be competing with nations that have both cheaper wages and lower dependency ratios-countries that will not only get the lion's share of investment but also will have to spend less of it on supporting their elders. To a policymaker in Brussels, Washington, or Tokyo, the advent of stable population will look worrisome indeed-unless the inequities between the enviable "old" and hungry or resentful "young" countries are bridged.
Supporting the Old Without Lots More Young?
The standard economist's formula for dealing with overpopulation is economic growth. The reasoning behind this formula is uncomfortable for environmentalists, but there is an inescapable logic: people with higher incomes, in countries that have social security for the elderly, want and need fewer babies; they do not need children to provide security. So, there's an enormous dilemma. Economic growth drives consumption, and waste, which is the reason population is a problem in the first place. But economic growth is also what's necessary to raise incomes to the point where population stabilizes.
It's here where the politics of economic development and the population stabilization that can follow become complicated. Environmentalists are not alone in their uneasiness about the full-throttle economic growth that increases incomes but also increases consumption of nonrenewable resources, degrades the environment, and may undermine social stability. They find some of their concerns echoed by their most fanatical adversaries-fundamental Islamists who regard Western modernization as decadent, but who have notoriously suppressed women's empowerment. The discomfort is made all the more excruciating by the fact that the anti-capitalist Muslims have become de facto bedfellows with some of their ideological enemies, the pro-capitalist Christian conservatives, in their mutual hatred of the "sexual revolution" of the past quarter-century. Experts on population virtually all agree that female empowerment, starting with education, is a necessary condition for reducing birthrates.
What's needed, to raise incomes and empower women while also mitigating concerns about profligate consumption, is an engine to drive economic growth without the kind of consumption that depends on the exploitation of remaining stocks of natural resources. How would this engine differ from the one that now drives global GDP yet leaves hundreds of millions of people in poverty and dependence on children-and vulnerable to social unrest?
To begin with, it would probably be a more "dematerialized" economy, in which economic productivity is not so rigidly tied to the extraction of ever more oil, minerals, wood, and other physical resources from the Earth as it is now. Aside from the costs of the ecological disruption and pollution that such industries impose, past experience shows that logging, mining, and drilling concessions tend to benefit mainly the very few (and often very corrupt) who have the power to make such deals. The natural wealth has never been widely distributed beyond this elite group. Governments in countries like Nigeria or Indonesia, which still have important natural resource stocks of oil or timber, also have vast populations of poor people for whom having children is a source of income. For this reason alone, it is essential that the global community address the inequity problem-and the closely related problem of corruption-far more quickly and seriously than it has. The rich Western countries have a big stake in the equitable development of the rest of the world, because equitable growth is the only effective tool for ameliorating international terrorism and its close cousin, uncontrollable immigration.
In the short run, though, controlled immigration is probably one of the most promising answers to the conundrum raised at the beginning of this article-the lack of enough new young workers (because of declining birthrates) to replace the retiring workers. Immigrants are demonstrably hardworking and willing to do the jobs our own pampered children scorn. Immigrants (being predominantly young adults) even tend to pay more in taxes than they get back in social services. They are a bargain, economically speaking. They also have fewer children than their age group in their home countries, as well as contributing enormously to the economic development of their home countries by sending back significant amounts of their earnings to parents or siblings.
That's only a short-term, partial solution, however. In the larger picture, the rich countries need to provide far more development aid, and to provide it with much tighter-and smarter-strings, to prevent misuse. Investment by the private sector can and will be the dominant source of capital, but that investment should not be going into exploitation of increasingly scarce natural resources. International lending agencies should stop encouraging this sort of investment, and in fact they should create barriers to discourage or prevent it. By the same token, international development agencies should concentrate much greater efforts on education and on creating the institutions needed to assure the rule of law.
As long as there are large economic disparities between nations, there will be unstoppable pressures both to have more children in the poor countries and to endure uncontrolled immigration of the poor into richer countries. When incomes are more equitable worldwide, the problem of smaller working populations supporting their elders will continue to be a problem as birthrates decline, but with all nations then sharing common constraints, the present incentives to have more babies and/or migrate to richer countries will disappear. Instead of being shackled by the destabilizing effects of poor people having large families to produce free labor and/or illegally migrating into rich countries in search of jobs, all governments can then focus on finding ways to build economic productivity through an increasingly non-extractive economy, enough to allow people everywhere to support their elders while living comfortably in their home countries.
Robert Ayres is professor emeritus of management and environment at the European business school INSEAD and King Gustav XVIth professor of environmental science in Sweden.
References and readings for each article are available at www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/.


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It's been said that loft conversions are the best way to add value to your home – they add a whole new floor, increase the total square footage, increase the number of rooms and potentially bathrooms, and, in general, create a more spacious home. Attic conversions also tend to be more cost-effective than other extensions, won't take space from your garden, don't even need any outdoor ground space and usually don't need planning permission. So what are you waiting for? Unless you have lots of items to store in your loft, it will usually be a space that goes unused and wasted, so consider contacting a Bessemer, AL loft conversion company to convert that empty space into a spacious living area, attic bedroom, home cinema, snug or games room. Worried about loft conversion costs? It could be less than you think, enquire with local loft conversion companies in Bessemer, AL to find out. More
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I've been having a problem with my iPod now for actually something like 2+ years (yes I probably should have looked into it long ago). It's a 6th generation 80GB iPod Classic.
It goes like this: I plug it in to transfer songs to it, and after transferring a limited number of tracks (around 10), iTunes and/or the iPod crashes and I need to kill the iTunes process to get it to disconnect. After this happens, my iPod will not accept any new tracks when re-plugged in, instead crashing on any attempt to transfer a new track, and to get it to work again I need to restore it to factory settings at which time it will accept another 10 or so songs before crashing. Sometimes, after the initial crash, it also wipes it's own hard drive and I lose whatever songs I did manage to transfer.
Obviously, it's a pretty low-chance case, but I can't afford a new iPod right now and this one is getting worse and worse (it used to let me put on a whole 50 songs!), so I would just like to know if there's anything at all I could try to make it work again (it's long out of warranty and I'm not living in a place where I have access to support).
Things I have tried: Different computers, different cables, waiting a very long time to see if it uncrashes


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ARTcrawl is starting 2014 with saturation in the arts, beginning at 5 p.m. Friday in downtown New Bern. It will feature visual arts, performances and creative demonstrations.
ARTcrawl is starting 2014 with saturation in the arts, beginning at 5 p.m. Friday in downtown New Bern. It will feature visual arts, performances and creative demonstrations.
It is a monthly production on each second Friday evening by Community Artist Will.
Middle Street is the site of the canvas art installation of Scott Coleman at MJ�s Raw Bar.
�The acrylic painting sequence is an expression of the spiritual journal of life, a zen symphony in blue,� he said, adding that �Surf�s Up� is dedicated to Brian Wilson, the original Beach Boy.
The Maunes present their works of art at Maxwell House Studio. Framing Fox will be displaying Civil War art, and Blaine Kruger will be at The Boat House painting boats on navigational charts.
Trent River Coffee Company has new works by Se�rah Cheatham and Tessie Ann Adams.
Drake Interiors showcases artwork on home decor.
Greater Good Gallery has Carol Jones demonstrating the skills of oil painting. Other artisans will hold creative demos, such as Alice Bilello, Lee Hood, James Herring and Elisa Schulman. The soaring light sculptures by Stan Harman are in the Isaac Taylor Garden.
Pollock Street features artists such as Dee Mayer and Jill Eberle in their studios at Baxters Fine Art Gallery.
The Bohemian Artists of New Bern will be scattered around town. Bear Towne Java hosts Lilly Stith, Braedon Welsh, Beth Gosnell, Mattie Cordio and Sarah Thrasher.
Visitors can also go to the original site of bohemian artists at the studio of Michaele Rose Watson, which includes Ben Watford throwing clay pots. New works by Ed Macomber are nearby in Studio 413.
Become a performing artist at Christophe�s Lounge in the Doubletree with karaoke. Call 638-0305.
There is a concert by Dana and Susan Robinson at 8 p.m. at Trent River Coffee Company.
The international film series �As Far as My Feet Will Carry Me� is at 7:30 p.m. in Orringer Auditorium at Craven Community College.
There is also music and dancing at 7:30 p.m. at Rivertowne Ballroom on Pollock Street. Call 637-2003 for details.
Call 649-1712 for details on ARTcrawl.
A Google map of the activities is on the web: communityartistwill.com


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Pre-school, Barn Owls
Welcome to Barn Owls. Our pre-school leader is Chloe.
News for Barn Owls
What is Happening in Barn Owls this Spring Term
This term in the Foundation Base we are getting creative! read
Added: 11th February 2019
Barn Owls Newsletter
Please click below to read our latest newsletter. read
Added: 8th February 2018
Spring Newsletter
Please click below to read our latest newsletter. read
Added: 17th January 2018
Barn Owls Newsletter
Please read the attached for all the latest Barn Owls news. read
Added: 3rd November 2017
Story Time
In story time we love to pretend that we are the characters from the stories and reenact the movements.
Added: 5th October 2017
Gingerbread Men Baking
As we are learning about our ourselves and name parts of our bodies, we thought it would be fun to make some delicious Gingerbread men.
Ohh....and didn't they taste good!
Added: 5th October 2017
PE time with Owls Class
In our PE we listened brilliantly to Mrs Kenderdine instructions whilst staying focused on the space around us.
Added: 5th October 2017
Barn Owls Newsletter
Please click below for the latest news from Barn Owls. Thank you. read
Added: 20th September 2017
Barn Owls Newsletter
Please read the latest newsletter from Barn Owls. read
Added: 10th May 2017
Life Education Van Visit
We had so much fun with Karen and Harold from the Life education Van. We learnt so much about how our bodies work. A big thank you from all of us in Barn Owls Preschool
Added: 17th October 2016
Country dancing with Owls Class
We thoroughly enjoyed our PE session with Owls. Learning our new
country dancing steps in the hall. read
Added: 26th September 2016
What is Happening in Barn Owls this Autumn Term
Welcome back.
After a glorious summer holiday the Barn Owls are back in full swing
and giving a warm welcome to our new friends! read
Added: 26th September 2016
Our new Barn Owls Sign
A big thank you to Mark at 4D Signs for a new Barn Owl sign.
We ABSOLUTLEY love it!
Added: 26th September 2016


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So here's what I could go for if I had a $60 gift card:
To be entered in this giveaway, leave me a comment letting me know what you'd like to purchase from CSN Stores if you win. Please remember to leave your e-mail address so that I can easily contact the winner.
Followers get an extra chance at the prize, so please leave me one additional comment if you follow my blog.
The giveaway will run through July 15th. Good luck!


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The Chapter Member-of-the-Year Award was established in 1991. It is administered by the Chapter Assembly.
1. Nature of the Award
1.1 The award shall consist of a certificate to be presented to the winner(s) by the Chapter Assembly Director during the Chapter Assembly Meeting (held during the ASIS&T annual meeting).
2. Purpose of the Award
2.1 The purpose of this award is to recognize the service of an individual to a particular Chapter. It is given for significant contributions to the membership of the Chapter through participation in and support of its meetings and publications; fund-raising; recruitment; or other significant activities. It is intended that this award recognize contributions at the local level.
3. Eligibility
3.1 Any ASIS&T member who is currently a member of the nominating Chapter shall be eligible to receive this award. More than one awardee may be chosen in a given year but the award need not be given if no suitable nominations are received. The same person shall not receive the award in two consecutive years.
4. Administration
4.1 The Chapter Member-of-the-Year Award is sponsored by the Association-at-Large and is administered by the Chapter Assembly.
5. Nominations
5.1 Nominations shall be solicited by mail from the Chapter Chairs by the Chapter Assembly Director.
5.2 Nominations can be made by any ASIS&T member, but are to be associated with the nominee's activities in a particular Chapter. The Members of the Chapter Assembly Advisory Committee (in their role as individual Chapter liaisons) shall also be responsible for soliciting nominations from Chapter officers. Advisors themselves may also submit nominations. Requests for nominations shall be publicized on the Chapter list serve.
5.3 Nominations shall be submitted electronically to the Chapter Assembly through the Chapter Annual Activities Report.
6. Jury Committee
6.1 The Chapter Assembly Director, Deputy Director, and Advisors shall serve as the Jury for this Award, with the Chapter Assembly Director serving as Jury Chair.
6.2 Members of the Jury may serve a second term, if, at that time, they serve the Chapter Assembly as Director, Deputy, or Advisor.
6.3 If a Jury member has been nominated for this award, the Jury Chair shall appoint another ASIS&T member to serve on the Jury, in place of the nominee.
7. Selection of the Awardee
7.1 The nominee's activities that shall be considered for this award include:
(a) Participation in Chapter programs as organizer, moderator, speaker, discussant, etc.;
(b) Service as Chapter officer;
(c) Participation in Chapter special projects;
(d) Recruitment of new Chapter members; and
(e) Participation in the Chapter's provision of other services to its members.
7.2 The Jury may also take into account the Chapter's past activities and the increase in activity for which the nominee is responsible.
7.3 The Jury shall make their decision based upon the documentation submitted. Each member of the Jury shall have one vote.
7.4 Each juror ranks all eligible nominations based on the evaluation criteria. Each criterion has a maximum value of 20 points, with the maximum number of points each nomination could receive being 100.
7.5 The Jury Chair totals the points from all jurors, and the winner is the Chapter member with the highest average score. To receive the award, a Chapter member must have an average score of 80 points or higher.
7.6 If two or more Chapter members receive identical scores, the Jury shall decide if more than one award should be given. If necessary, run-off votes may be taken or the Jury Chair may convene a conference call to resolve the decision.
7.7 If there are no appropriate candidates, the award need not be given in a particular year.
7.8 The Jury Chair shall communicate the Jury's decision to the ASIS&T President, the Chair of the Awards and Honors Committee, the ASIS&T Executive Director, and the recipient(s) of the award prior to the annual meeting. Prior notification will allow the recipient(s) to be present to accept her/his/their award(s).
7.9 The Jury Chair shall provide a 50-250 word abstract, stating why the Award was given. This abstract will be used to publicize the award. Material for this abstract can be taken from the voting rationales provided by the members of the Jury.
8. Presentation of the Award
8.1 The award shall be presented to the winner(s) by the Chapter Assembly Director during the Chapter Assembly Meeting (held during the ASIS&T annual meeting).
9. Publicity
9.1 The award shall be publicized through the Bulletin of the Association for Information Science and Technology and on the winning Chapter's website. Publicity is the responsibility of ASIS&T Headquarters.
10. Deadlines
10.1 ASIS&T Headquarters and the Jury Chair shall solicit nominations by May 15.
10.2 Nominations are due by July 14, the deadline for Annual Activity Reports.
10.3 Jurors shall submit evaluations electronically to the Jury Chair 75 days before the ASIS&T annual meeting.
10.4 Selection shall be made and the ASIS&T President, the Chair of the Awards and Honors Committee, the ASIS&T Executive Director, and the award recipient(s) shall be notified by 30 days prior to the ASIS&T annual meeting.
Activities of Nominee:
Chapter Offices:
Participation in Chapter Programs:
Contribution to Chapter Publications:
Participation in Chapter Social Projects:
Recruitment of New Members:
Participation in Services to Chapter Members:
[Approved by Board: 10/31/91] [revised 6/08]


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Paws & Listen
As a company that cares deeply for animal welfare, we were horrified by the needless slaughter of 100 sled dogs in Whistler in April of 2010. The following spring, we partnered with the Vancouver Humane Society (VHS) to encourage our customers to 'paws and listen' about the suffering of sled dogs. Our British Columbia shops asked their customers to sign postcards addressed to the Minister of Agriculture demanding a ban on dog sled races and tours. We held walks in Vancouver, Victoria and Whistler with concerned customers and their canine companions in protest of the dog sledding industry, and of course, it wouldn't be a LUSH campaign without a beautiful limited edition product to raise funds for the VHS! PAWS soap was sold in our BC shops and online during the month of the campaign.
Our Partners
The Vancouver Humane Society is a registered charity dedicated to exposing animal abuse and assisting individuals, businesses and governments to end animal suffering, cruelty and exploitation. Funding comes primarily from donations, and our activities are made possible with the generous assistance of volunteers. For more information, visit www.vancouverhumanesociety.bc.ca
Our Progress
You couldn't wait to get your paws on our limited edition soap! The proceeds raised from PAWS soap totaled $14,500 and were donated to the Vancouver Humane Society (VHS). 10,725 of you signed our petition to ban dog sled races and tours in British Columbia, and our voices were heard! VHS presented our signatures along with thousands of others at a hearing in Vancouver, and British Columbia now has the strictest animal cruelty laws in Canada.


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On Tuesday, June 10, registered voters across the state will be able to exercise one of the most precious privileges democracy grants us – the opportunity to determine who will represent them in their government.
Locally, we'll select a Republican candidate to face the lone Democrat in the 6th Circuit solicitor's race.
The list of hopefuls for the U.S. Senate race will be narrowed. So will the lieutenant governor, adjutant general, agriculture commissioner and state treasurer races.
The June 10 primary is just a few weeks away. Locally, we'll select a Republican candidate to face the lone Democrat in the Sixth Circuit solicitor's race.
The list of hopefuls for the U.S. Senate race will be narrowed. So will the lieutenant governor, adjutant general, agriculture commissioner, state treasurer and S.C. House District 53 races.
I have read that President Barack Obama is weak and that Obama's actions may put the United States in physical war against Russia because of his stance on Ukraine. I agree with the first point, but I hope the second point will not come true!
I am a Democrat who voted for Obama twice. It seems every day that goes by, I see how stupid the second vote was.
What Doris Starnes thought was an act of vandalism instead was a pack of determined coyotes.
Some type of prey, most likely a rabbit, sought refuge in a drain pipe buried well beneath the ground in Starnes' front yard.
Not ones to give up easy, the wild canines tore away the ground and destroyed about 80 feet of the drain pipe. The responding sheriff's deputy said it probably took hours for the persistent pack to do the damage. The fate of the prey is unknown.
Kitchen fires have become a hot issue and Lancaster County firefighters hope to cool down the subject.
Kitchen fires will be a top issue addressed during the 19th annual Lancaster County Fire Expo set, for Saturday, Oct. 12, in the University Place (Walmart Supercenter) parking lot on S.C. 9 Bypass West.
County firefighters, according to statistics, have responded to 78 structure fires that began in the kitchen area in 2012.
"The kitchen fires are an issue in Lancaster County," said Lancaster County Fire Marshal Stephen Blackwelder.
Veteran's Day and Memorial Day are two notable occasions we pause to honor those who have served and others who have made the ultimate sacrifice in service to our nation in the armed forces.
There are other days and other ways.
One is with the Lancaster County Veterans Affairs Office, which is looking for dedicated folks to serve as volunteer van drivers to take veterans to medical appointments in Columbia and Rock Hill.
It's almost showtime for the eighth annual Indian Land Fall Festival and fourth annual S.C. Championship Chili Cookoff.
Saturday's festival, promises to be a lot of fun for everyone from toddlers to teens and older folks, all for a good cause.
"This is the largest single event in Indian Land all year long," festival co-chair Tracy Little said said.
He's hoping the festival will draw more than 10,000 visitors.
Today is the 12th anniversary of "the day that changed the world." A lot has changed since knife-wielding hijackers crashed two airplanes into the World Trade Center, toppling its twin 110-story towers, slammed a third plane into the Pentagon and a fourth crashed in a Pennsylvania field.
The National September 11 Memorial & Museum is under construction near ground zero and is set to open in 2014.
The museum stands not only as a testament of remembrance, but also to our nation's resiliency to rebuild and rebound.
It's a known fact the Lancaster County School District is blessed with its share of great teachers.
Any doubting Thomases should have been at the district's recent Celebrate Great Teaching, which annually ushers in the new school term at Lancaster High School.
A highlight of the event was the salute to the 2012-13 Celebrate Great Teaching winners.
The latest winners included Brittany McManus, Traci Shigley, Shelby Schwartz and Richard Gay.
McManus, a Discovery School fifth-grade teacher, won the Beginning Celebrate Great Teaching Award.
If you're ready for some football, there will be plenty of it today, Aug. 23, at the annual Founders Kickoff Classic, a scrimmage involving all four county schools, at Buford High School's Jackets Stadium.
Action opens with Central High School of Pageland playing Fort Mill High School at 6 p.m. Next up is Andrew Jackson High School against McBee High School at 6:45 p.m. The third period features Lancaster High School facing Indian Land High School at 7:30 p.m. Host Buford caps play with a battle with Lancaster at 8:15 p.m.
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