Marolt: When big money talks down to a little town

Considering that 83% of flights into Aspen are private and there’s nearly no chance of Aspen losing commercial air service if the airport runway and taxiway remain configured as is, it doesn’t seem like there would be much reason to even consider rearranging our landing strip and taxiways to accommodate bigger jets.

Yet, we are. Even though redoing the airport so that more and bigger private jets can fly in and out can hardly be expected to result in less overall carbon emissions, we are being forced to consider this asphalt-induced growth spurt for our carbon footprint anyway.