At the domestic terminal of the Leonardo da Vinci Airport in Rome, the weekday morning rush hour feels more like a bus station than an airport, filled with day commuters to Milan rushing onto planes that leave at least every half hour, carrying little more than a briefcase or a handbag.

Across town, at Ciampino, Romes second airfield, which serves only low-cost flights, there has been an explosion of leisure travellers: traffic grew 65 percent in 2005 from a year earlier.

These days, everyone seems to be flying everywhere - a function of busier lives, better air connections and the proliferation of really cheap tickets.

In Europe, air passenger traffic has grown more than 5 percent a year for the last two years, according to the Association of European Airlines. In Asia, it is growing by over 7 percent a year, experts say, and the region is projected to lead world air traffic by 2025, according to the Association of Asia Pacific Airlines.

The problem is that air travel is the “dirtiest choice of transport” in terms of the emissions that cause global warming, according to Peder Jensen, transportation expert at the European Environment Agency in Copenhagen. Though exact estimates are complicated, it is four to five times more polluting than a train for the distance traveled, and perhaps twice as polluting as driving, according to Friends of the Earth. Many estimates are higher: flying from London to Paris or Brussels produces 10 times more emissions per passenger than taking the train, according to independent research commissioned by Eurostar in 2006.

And no one has figured out how to square the dramatic rise in air travel, with the need to curb carbon dioxide emissions. Airline emissions increased 86 percent in the European Union between 1990 and 2004, the Environment Agency says.

“I dont really think about the emissions, which I know is a pity,” said Paolo Tomasso, 40, one of 100 lawyers from his Rome firm who made the hourlong flight for a meeting in Milan on Friday, at a price of about several hundred euros.

“At the end of the day its about time and convenience,” he said, estimating that he could drive to the airport, drop the car and make it to Milan in just over three hours. By contrast, the train is about four hours and costs \60. Airplanes are the buses of our fast, globalized planet.

With a weekend flight to Rome, Prague or Barcelona now costing less than a Saturday dinner out in London, how can you blame people for flying? For that matter, how could the European Commission function were it not for planes?

“If you want a united Europe, centered on Brussels, you need a good aviation structure, since most of Europes capitols are more than a two hour flight away,” said Niels-Eirik Nertun, environment director at SAS Scandinavian Airlines.

And I confess: I am on a plane nearly every week. As competition increases, so has the number of “city pairings” in Europe, making it easier to get there and back home in a day.

The airline industry “has consensus about the need to address environmental concerns,” said David Henderson of the Association of European Airlines, and has tried hard to improve efficiency, designing lighter, more fuel efficient planes, for example. Virgin Atlantic is experimenting with towing planes on to the runway to save fuel. But there is no technological breakthrough on the horizon, the airplane equivalent of a hybrid car.

He said there would likely be some “residual gap” between efforts to improve efficiency, which are producing gains of over 1 percent a year, and the continuing growth in passenger traffic.

So what to do? “We need to make the price signals a better measure of the environmental cost that no one is paying,” said Jensen, of the European Environment Agency.

The European Commission has proposed that airlines be included in European-wide carbon trading, which already applies to industries like cement plants. That would mean carriers would be granted permits for a certain level of carbon emissions, but would have to buy unused permits - from other airlines or industries - to go over. The result would likely be higher prices.

In the meantime, new businesses have sprung up selling “carbon offsets” to make up for the emissions caused by your flight. They will put money into a project that eats CO2, like planting new forests, to compensate for your air travel.

SAS now allows passengers to calculate the emissions caused by their journeys and to voluntarily purchase offsets to cover the journeys; Lufthansa has similar plans. A flight from Stockholm to Madrid produces about 400 kilograms of CO2 per passenger, which can be offset by about \6, Nertun said.

(12-19) 10:05 PST Chicago (AP) —

Tribune Co. Chairman and CEO Dennis FitzSimons will step down as soon as the $8.2 billion buyout of the media conglomerate closes and will leave the company at the end of the year, Tribune said Wednesday.

The announcement came on the eve of the day Tribune hopes the transaction will formally close, following reports its lenders were giving last-minute scrutiny to the deal.

FitzSimons’ eventual departure had been expected since real estate magnate Sam Zell agreed in April to lead the buyout and take Tribune private. Zell is to become chairman once the deal closes, with $315 million invested in the company and the right to buy 40 percent of its shares.

FitzSimons, 57, will leave Tribune with more than $32 million in severance and stock holdings, based on an analysis of corporate disclosure statements filed by the company.

“It’s the right time for this transition and for Tribune’s 20,000 employees to hear a single voice from the top,” he said in an e-mail to staff shortly before the announcement was made.

Tribune shares initially fell more than 6 percent on investors’ nervousness about a potential last-minute snag in banks signing off on the buyout, based on a Chicago Tribune report that, citing anonymous sources, said the lenders were questioning executives and scouring company records. But the stock recovered following the announcement that FitzSimons is leaving, an apparent signal that the closing was on track.

Shares were down $1.24, or 3.7 percent, to $32.07 in afternoon trading Wednesday after trading as low as $30.81 earlier in the session.

Company spokesman Gary Weitman did not immediately respond to queries about the closing.

Tribune owns nine daily newspapers, 23 television stations and the Chicago Cubs baseball team, which it has agreed to sell under terms set by Zell. The buyout will result in the publicly traded company becoming private.

___

On the Net:

«www.tribune.com»

A new Associated Press calculation shows that compensation for Americas top CEOs has skyrocketed into the stratospheric heights of pro athletes and movie stars: Half make more than $8.3 million a year, and some make much, much more.

CEOs of companies in the Standard & Poors 500 that filed proxy information in the first half of this year received a combined $4.16 billion in 2006, according to APs formula.

The high cost of chief executive pay has drawn criticism in recent years as salaries rose, stock options paid off like lottery jackpots, and perks like chauffeured cars and private jets spread. Still, there are few signs of any investor backlash.

Yahoo Inc.s Terry Semel, whose Internet company has lagged behind Google Inc. in profit growth and stock performance, led the pack with total compensation last year of $71.7 million, according to the AP formula used to analyze those filings.

Thats more than 2 times the $27 million in total compensation this year for the New York Yankees Alex Rodriguez, baseballs highest-paid player, and higher than the typical pay A-list stars like Brad Pitt or Leonardo DiCaprio earn for a movie $20 million, plus 20 percent of the gross box office take.

Semel was followed on the AP list by two energy industry CEOs, Bob Simpson of XTO Energy Inc. at $59.5 million and Occidental Petroleum Corp.s Ray R. Irani at $52.8 million. Investment banks and energy companies were the sectors with the highest-paid leaders.

The top 10 earners were in disparate industries, but they all had one thing in common: They were paid at least $30 million each in 2006.

The Securities and Exchange Commission required companies starting this year to more completely disclose what theyre paying their top executives. But the SECs approach has been criticized for failing to provide useful figures for investors; the AP, in consultation with leading experts, came up with its own formula designed specifically to isolate the value of all compensation awarded to CEOs in the previous year.

Of the 386 companies in the AP list those whose fiscal years ended after Dec. 15, and who reported by June 1 under the new SEC rules only six reported their CEOs made less than $1 million last year.

The lowest paid was Costco Wholesale Corp. CEO James Sinegal, who made $411,688. But no need to shed tears for him: Sinegal also owns 2.4 million Costco shares, worth about $1.3 billion, and has options to buy 1.2 million more shares.

This years expanded disclosure requirements also offer a much more detailed look at perks given to top executives. They range from multimillion dollar tax payments on behalf of executives to much smaller amounts for household bills, including home alarm monitoring.

A handful of companies, including Washington Mutual Inc., have stopped offering perks, and pay consultants say many more are likely to do so as boards think twice about the repercussions of seeing their largess disclosed in proxies.

The AP formula, developed with advice from pay consultants Pearl Meyer & Partners and Mercer Human Resource Consulting, adds up salaries, bonuses, perks, above-market interest on pay that is set aside for later and what companies estimated the present value to be of restricted stock and options awards on the day they were granted last year.

This differs from the summary compensation formula that the SEC requires companies to use in proxy statements. Some executive pay consultants say the SEC formula is of less value to investors because it includes expenses that companies recognize during the year for current and previously awarded stock grants.

That tends to overstate in some cases, and understate in others, the specific pay decisions boards of directors took during the year, they said.

SEC Chairman Chris Cox told the AP that the SEC is looking at the statements it receives this year and could change the rules going forward.

No matter which formula you use, Yahoo CEO Semels total illustrates one of the most pronounced recent trends in executive pay: Salary and cash bonuses account for only a small portion of total compensation. Almost all of his pay $71.4 million came as stock grants and stock options, according to AP calculations. His salary totaled only $250,001.

Plus, the eventual payouts from stock options handed to CEOs could be substantially higher in future years if the overall market keeps floating most stock boats higher.

Consider the case of Occidental Petroleums Irani, who topped a separate Top 10 list of executives who exercised previously awarded stock options, compiled for the AP by Capital IQ, a division of Standard & Poors. His net gain, before taxes, on shares he exercised in 2006 was $270.2 million an amount not included in APs pay total.

But its worth noting that three hedge fund managers James Simons of Renaissance Technologies Corp., Kenneth Griffin of Citadel Investment Group and Sears Holding Corp. Chairman Edward Lampert, who also runs ESL Investments together earned more than the 386 CEOs the AP studied combined. They collectively earned $4.4 billion last year, according to Alpha magazine, published by Institutional Investor.

Hedge fund managers say there is nothing wrong with such outsized returns because their pay is strictly related to performance and could fall to zero in any year when they stumble.

The likelihood of a similar flatlining of pay totals for CEOs of public companies is almost nil, however, even for companies with huge losses and dire prospects. And consultants expect CEOs to cite the fat paychecks of hedge fund managers and the kings of Wall Street to argue for even more lucrative packages.

It wasnt supposed to turn out this way.

This was expected to be the year that investor anger over pay boiled over. After Home Depot Inc.s Robert Nardelli and Pfizer Inc.s Henry A. McKinnell left their battered companies with golden parachutes worth $210 million and nearly $200 million, respectively, shareholder activists entered proxy season this spring primed for a showdown on pay and outsized retirement packages. It didnt happen.

Most annual meetings were quiet affairs. Shareholders did win votes giving them a say in executive compensation at Verizon Communications Inc., Blockbuster Inc. and Motorola Inc.

But mutual funds largely backed companies in voting against the initiatives, a poor portent for their future success at slowing the growth of executive compensation.

A recent report by the Congressional Research Service helps to put the executive pay issue into a real-world context. CEOs make, on average, 179 times as much as rank and file workers, double the 90-to-1 ratio in 1994, according to the agencys calculations.

Options grants and stock awards helped boost CEO pay as much as six-fold during the 1990s economic expansion, according to compensation consultant Donald Delves. Then the stock market bubble burst in 2000 but CEO pay hasnt come down since.

By contrast, median household income edged up only 8.6 percent from 1990 to 2005, according to U.S. Census data.

If the minimum wage had risen at the same pace as CEO pay since 1990, it would be worth $22.61 today, according to the Institute for Policy Studies. Instead, the federal minimum wage will increase to $5.85 an hour on July 24, the first increase in a decade.

CEOs are also much richer than lower-level executives at their own companies. The Hay Group, a compensation consulting company, estimates that the average CEO makes 2.5 times more than the average executive in base pay.

That doesnt bother S. Randy Lampert, a managing director for investment banking at Morgan Joseph & Co., who advises corporations through the banks Activist Defense Group. Compensation is only excessive when it exceeds industry norms and the stock performance has been underwhelming, he said.

Thats not how the board and executives at Costco see it.

CEO Sinegal and company Chairman Jeffrey Brotman havent received a salary increase in six years, a period when shares of the nations largest wholesale club operator rose 28.3 percent.

The philosophy of the board, in terms of compensating executives, is that we are fairly paid, if not slightly underpaid, relative to other corporate peers, Richard Galanti, the companys chief financial officer and a director, said in an interview. But thats OK. Its a fair wage, but not absurd.

I think it sends a message to our employees that they dont see their CEOs name on the Top Five highest-paid people in the world, he said. Its a positive message.

Not every board thinks the same way as Costcos, which angers J. Richard Finlay, founder of The Centre for Corporate & Public Governance in Toronto, which bills itself as North Americas first independent think tank for corporate ethics.

CEO pay isnt set by markets, Finlay said in an e-mail interview. Instead, it is determined by a small clique of like-minded directors, most of whom are themselves past and current CEOs with a vested interest in perpetuating a failed, but to them, remarkably generous, system.

Billionaire investor Warren Buffett, the worlds second richest man after Microsoft Corp. founder Bill Gates, doesnt go quite that far. But he did write in his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders last year that too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance.

Some boards, apparently, are starting to agree. Harvard law professor Lucian Bebchuk, co-author of the book Pay Without Performance, said board members have been calling him to talk about proposals he made this year at a handful of companies to give shareholders a louder voice on pay.

As a shareholder activist, he engaged three of them American International Group Inc., Bristol-Myers Squibb Co. and Home Depot. All agreed that CEO compensation should be ratified by the entire board, not just the compensation committee.

I did not expect boards to be so willing to make changes, he said.

The SECs new disclosure rules also required companies to explain the thinking behind their CEO pay packages, describing, in detail, the goals theyve set for executives in a section called compensation discussion and analysis.

John Wilcox, head of corporate governance at retirement system TIAA-CREF, which manages more than $410 billion, said his sense is that some companies are backing into this process.

Some have admitted, as they have gone through this process, that they have not had a compensation philosophy, he said.

The rules also mandate narratives, in plain English, explaining how pay decisions are reached. But a study of the disclosures by Clarity Communications found that most failed to meet readability standards many states require for insurance forms.

Its a complex subject and thats really the question Why is it so complex? said Dominic Jones, Claritys president.

Why is it that a CEO gets compensated in such a discombobulating fashion when the average worker gets a paycheck and can tell immediately what its about? … If youre an investor and you get your (proxy) statement and it just goes on for pages and pages of the different methods used to pay the CEO, at some point you have to ask yourself why. Why dont I get all this?

Still, if the process around pay is inching its way toward something that looks more democratic, executive pay may be one area where gravity doesnt apply.

Said TIAA-CREF Wilcox: Once its up there, its very hard to pull it down again. 2007 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.