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TechnoratiAs the Nation's Top Metro Regions Show, It's Time to Reinvent Our Energy Future
As greenhouse gases increasingly warm the globe, which of America's metro areas are the "cleanest" and which are the "dirtiest" in carbon emissions? And what are the most obvious steps that could be taken to protect the planet's future?
A first-ever study of the climate footprint of America's top 100 metro regions starts to tell the story. Based on 2005 figures calculated by the Brookings Institution, each region's carbon emissions caused by cars and trucks, plus power supplied to residences, is reported.
The "winners" --- the most modest users, per capita -- turn out to be such regions as New York-Northern New Jersey, Portland, Ore., Seattle-Tacoma, San Francisco, Honolulu, San Diego, and a surprise performer: Los Angeles.
The biggest carbon emitters, by contrast, include such metro areas as Lexington, Ky., Indianapolis, Knoxville, Oklahoma City, Nashville and St. Louis.
So what explains the differences?
The best performers provide a clue: high-density, compact development with new and expanded rail transit. Many of the regions with the smallest per capita carbon footprints -- among them New York, San Francisco, San Diego and Los Angeles -- fit that profile.
By contrast, some of the metros with high per capita carbon emission scores have experienced dramatic sprawling and pedestrian-hostile development, and are weaker on mass transit.
There are some exceptions: The Washington, D.C., and Atlanta regions, for example, have significant rail-transit ridership, but they've also sprawled so much that they have larger-than-average carbon footprints.
And the source of power makes a real difference. The nation's capital region has a carbon footprint 10 times the Seattle region's chiefly because it is heavily dependent on coal for power, while the Pacific Northwest has major hydropower sources that don't emit carbon.
Plus there's a surprise geographic factor too: The heavy-carbon-footprint metros are overwhelmingly east of the Mississippi, the light-carbon ones in the West. And there's a north-south divide too: The map shows a concentration of high emitters in America's heavily coal-consuming, fast-suburbanizing Southeast.
The implications are compelling: State officials, mayors and county leaders should push for protection of open lands, new transit lines that attract more-compact development, and rules and incentives to get utilities to switch away from coal (the most polluting, carbon-heavy energy source of all).
But the federal government needs to play a far more constructive role. "Metros can't 'go it alone' in solving as vast a problem as global climate change," says Mark Muro, policy director of Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Program.
And arguably, how the metros go on climate emissions, so goes America: The top 100 account for two-thirds of the country's population and almost three-quarters of its economic activity. And their carbon output, despite all their mayors' noble talk of reducing our greenhouse-gas emissions, rose 7.5 percent from 2000 to 2005.
The federal government is a poor ally now, Brookings charges. It fails to tax carbon fuels enough to discourage their polluting impacts and reduce the country's massive dependence on foreign oil. While countries around the world expand their clean-energy research budgets, Washington is spending just a third as much on energy research as it did in 1978. Federal transportation funding is tilted heavily toward highways, away from transit; indeed, its formulas reward states for the worst behavior -- high vehicle miles traveled, fuel use and lane miles of travel.
Solutions offered include a targeted carbon tax or full "cap and trade" system, so that polluting energy consumption pays its full costs; dramatic increase in federal research on potentials such as wind and solar power; a minimum power share of renewable sources that states must achieve; and "modal neutrality" -- an even playing field between highways and rail in federal transportation funding to states and localities.
America's energy rules were written for a different world, a different century. So Brookings has it right: We need a massive re-evaluation -- federal, state and metrowide -- to reinvent our energy future and rein in America's cumulative, massive carbon footprint.
Neal Peirce's column appears alternate Mondays on editorial pages of The Times.
© 2008, Washington Post Writers Group
9 Comments so far
Show AllLooks to me like the urban areas with the smallest (per capita) carbon footprints are also the ones with the highest quality of life. If that's accurate, it's certainly worth mentioning. In fact, it's probably more important than a city's contribution to global warming.
Does this study include all of the emissions generated trucking food and things to the cities? Sounds alittle suspect to me...
Only now the suburbs (I am also a suburbanite) are the only affordable place for service workers (service class=nonwhites in many cities) and those who moved to "escape" to homogenous racial/economic suburbs are finding the suburbs are changing.
ClassAct,
Exactly. The exploitation of racism, in service to the quadumvirate of Big Oil, Big Detroit, Big Real Estate, and Big Box in the development of suburbia cannot be underestimated.
And, any quality of life advantage to suburban areas was lost a long time ago. Most suburban areas are noiser, and often more air polluted than a close-in city neighborhood. And, most suburbanites spend far more time in their cars sitting in traffic on their commutes and errands than city dwellers ever do walking or riding public transit. And I know this from experience living in several cities and suburban areas.
Living in the major city of Los Angeles, I would like to point out to AdeleTheCzech that suburbanites do not "pay extra," they pay less, and that suburbs were not created to enjoy "open space," but to avoid the presence of non-whites who were perceived as bringing crime and violence.
To reduce crime and violence as well as to create the basis for national fuel independence, the US has only one course: to encourage all homeowners to become cannabis farmers. That would put the "open spaces" to good use – even on calm, cloudy days.
Every time I read a piece like this, which flat-out ignores Americans' love affair with their cars, I start grinding my teeth! All over the U.S. there are suburbs where (like the one I live in) houses "sprawl" over large areas: we used to call this "open space," by the way, and paid extra to enjoy it.
To radically reduce the automobile's contribution to global warming, we need 100% electric cars -- and the electricity to run them must be generated by wind and solar. This is doable, and quickly too.
Americans will make sacrifices to heal the planet, but mass transit just can't work in the suburbs -- or out in rural areas, for that matter. Give us electric cars (and gov't subsidies for people who are struggling economically, so they can buy them).
The correlation is red state / blue state, with the blue states having more progressive policies.
Sorry. I hit "Submit Comment" twice, though reiteraing the point won't hurt.
What we need are leaders with enough moxie and name recognition to be heard through the clutter to rouse the American people for the need for a massive re-evaluation.
If Obama is elected, we shall need to constantly pressure him to use his speechmaking skills to follow FDR's example and put the in a "were in crisis but we're working together to solve it."