Big US Carbon Footprints Lie East Of Mississippi
US: May 30, 2008
NEW YORK - Nine of the 10 US urban areas that release the most greenhouse
gases per person lie east of the Mississippi River, a study showed on
Thursday.
"A north-south divide is also apparent," said the report issued by two think
tanks, the New York-based Regional Plan Association and the Washington-based
Brookings Institution.
Seven of the largest emitters of greenhouse gases are in the south,
including two cities each in Tennessee, Ohio and Kentucky, it said.
Carbon dioxide, produced largely by burning fossil fuels, is the most common
of the greenhouse gases, which are blamed for trapping heat in the Earth's
atmosphere and altering the climate. China is on course to overtake the
United States as the world's top emitter of carbon dioxide.
The analysis counted greenhouse gases from only buildings and
transportation, excluding factors like utilities.
Honolulu, Hawaii, was the greenest US metropolitan area, with a carbon
footprint of only 1.356 metric tons per resident in 2005.
The second greenest in the top 100 was Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana,
with Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, Oregon-Washington in third.
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania
was fourth and Boise City-Nampa in Idaho was fifth.
The worst polluter was Lexington-Fayette, Kentucky, which ranked last at
100. Indianapolis, Indiana, was 99th, Cincinnati-Middletown,
Ohio-Kentucky-Indiana was 98th and Toledo, Ohio, was 97th.
Louisville, Kentucky-Indiana came in 96th, with
Nashville-Davidson-Murfreesboro in Tennessee in 95th.
The West was the only part of the United States that cut its carbon
footprint from 2000 to 2005, the report said.
CITIES ARE GREENER
Slashing carbon output will require a multifaceted strategy, the study said,
with fast-growing southern cities such as Austin, Texas, Raleigh, North
Carolina, and Nashville, Tennessee, having the fast-growing carbon
footprints.
"Solutions must go beyond breakthroughs in technologies and fuels," the
study said. "Lifestyle and behavioural changes are needed to reduce the
metropolitan carbon footprint further."
Transportation produces one-third of the nation's carbon footprint, churning
out 534 million metric tons in 2005. Vehicles driven on highways put out 80
percent of that total.
Residences, which demand fuel for heating and cooling, and running
televisions and other appliances, put out about 39 percent of carbon
emissions, the study said.
Metropolitan areas, where people drive shorter distances and use less
electricity in their homes, are greener. On average, an urban dweller's
carbon footprint was 86 percent of a suburban or rural resident's, the
report said.
The Northeast has a built-in disadvantage -- colder weather coupled with
fuel oil burners that tend to be more polluting than natural gas heaters
used in other regions.
But the commuter rail, bus and subway systems that are much more common in
the Northeast shrink its carbon footprint when just greenhouse gases
generated by transportation are counted.
New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, New York-New Jersey-Pennsylvania
ranked first with the lowest pollution in terms of just transportation.
Six of the top 10 on this list were in the Northeast, with none in the
Midwest or South. The other four were all in the Pacific or the West:
Honolulu, Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, Las Vegas-Paradise and
Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton.
(Editing by Diane Craft and John O'Callaghan)
Story by Joan Gralla
REUTERS NEWS SERVICE
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