When people say that cities are the real polluters, I kinda want to laugh at them
Also, I fucking hate corn
The reason that cities produce so much less carbon despite having so many people is because there is less driving and more centralized power, the least carbon emitting places are cities with clean energy and an urban tree canopy as well as decent public transiy
Suburbs are inherently inefficient and polluting due to their low density and large homes that make for places that need massive amounts of energy to exist and they waste enormous amounts heating and cooling homes due to the size and as the homes are spread out energy gets lost in the movement of the energy meaning more needs to be produced compounding the issues
This is interesting, but I find the core conceit of the study a little odd. Not sure why a carbon tax would be applied to households and not the manufacturers that are actually doing the emissions.
The power of the individual doesn’t really mean much in the climate change sphere. The action of an individual is nothing compared to the industry around them, so policy should be aimed there instead.
I agree with that wholeheartedly, I was simply using this study to try and illustrate a point about broader US urban planning
Yeah for sure, honestly the urban planning angle is the most interesting thing from the study imo. Also shows how big of an impact decarbonizing the grid has. A reason the Central Valley in CA is so different from the rest of the rural areas could be in part because of all the surplus renewables we have on our grid. I think in the article too they were saying how the Midwest has a really “dirty” grid that drags their score down.
It is also really interesting because you can see the largest forests and undeveloped lands are on the map in eastern Washington/Oregon, Western NY, The Piedmont, parts of Appalachia, Southeastern Cali, the Big Bend and the Lower Mississippi Valley
