Wired has two maps on CO2 emissions. One is the
per capita emissions map that shows cities are actually better at dealing with CO2 than exurban areas. The other is the total CO2 map which shows cities as the main culprits when it comes to CO2 emissions. What is interesting is that they point out the west is much worse off due to its sprawlyness.
There's a lot of information you could mine from these maps, but one thing stood out to me: the West, for all of our hippie do-gooders, isn't doing well (as a whole) from a per-capita emissions perspective. We simply don't live in dense enough situations to benefit from the efficiency gains created by urban living. Lots of infrastructure serving only a few people generates high per-capita emissions.
This comes after CNT put out the
same types of maps a few years ago for Chicago. Guess where the CO2 emissions are per capita, not along the Metra lines or in the transit rich core. Interesting.
2 comments:
What are those odd bright-red blobs in South Chicago and in Cook County just to the NE of the Dupage County border? Industrial areas? They're both well-served by rail lines.... perhaps they simply don't have any households in them, and do have lots of carbon-intensive industry, thus skewing the percentages?
I believe the northeast dupage blob is O'hare International Airport and the South Chicago. I believe the South Cook county is an industrial area. But I don't know if its skewing the numbers.
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