Discovery News: Environmental

How Green Is Your Hometown?

The Brookings Institution today released a report ranking the nation’s 100 biggest metropolitan areas by their residents’ average carbon footprint—the amount of CO2 they are responsible for releasing based on vehicle transportation (including freight and personal) and home energy use.

City living is greener overall: Although two-thirds of the U.S. population lives in the 100 biggest urban areas, they are responsible for only 56 percent of the carbon emissions. These urbanites’ footprint is 14 percent less than the country average.

So… who are the winners and losers?

Here are the 10 metropolitan areas with the lowest carbon footprint…and the highest (per capita CO2 emissions in metric tons in parentheses):

BEST
1.  Honolulu, HI (1.356)
2.  Los Angeles-Long Beach-Santa Ana, CA (1.413)
3.  Portland-Vancouver-Beaverton, OR-WA (1.446 )
4.  New York-Northern New Jersey-Long Island, NY-NJ-PA (1.495)
5.  Boise City-Nampa, ID (1.507)
6.  Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue, WA (1.556)
7.  San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA (1.573)
8.  San Francisco-Oakland-Fremont, CA (1.585)
9.  El Paso, TX (1.613)
10. San Diego-Carlsbad-San Marcos, CA (1.630)

WORST
91.  Knoxville, TN (3.134)
92.  Harrisburg-Carlisle, PA (3.190)
93.  Oklahoma City, OK (3.204)
94.  St. Louis, MO-IL (3.217)
95.  Nashville-Davidson--Murfreesboro, TN (3.222)
96.  Louisville, KY-IN (3.233)
97.  Toledo, OH (3.240)
98.  Cincinnati-Middletown, OH-KY-IN (3.281)
99.  Indianapolis, IN (3.364)
100. Lexington-Fayette, KY (3.455)

Here in Minneapolis-St. Paul we rank 45th.

How dense the city is, how much home heating and cooling the city requires, and whether the city uses primarily coal or a less carbon-intensive form of energy all contribute to where it sits in the green rankings.

Check out the whole report here (click on "Download"), and the complete rankings, clicking on "Download  Per Capita Footprints Supporting Material."

Thoughts of Burma

The situation in Myanmar is no better a week after Cyclone Nargis hit the country, with the government seizing U.N. food aid and most aid workers still unable to enter the country.

New reports suggest more destructive weather may be yet to come this season and water-borne disease is a growing concern.

In 2000, I went to Burma while living in the region. It’s hard to say what a beautiful and amazing visit it was without sounding trite, but it’s true. I hate to think of the damage and destruction there.

Here are a few pictures. (Click for a larger version.) Thinking of Burma, and wishing there was more we could do.

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The woman in this photo is wearing thanaka paste, made from ground wood and used as a cosmetic and sunscreen.

These people sold fruit to a riverboat on the Irrawaddy River, but further north than the worst of the cyclone hit.

Finally, here's a photo from the Shwedagon Paya, an enormous and intricate Buddhist temple complex in the capital, Yangon. These are my notes from this photo: "Each person has a particular animal and a particular compass direction associated with the day of the week they were born. At the temple, there's a shrine for each and it's considered a good act to come to your shrine on your day of the week and pay appropriate respects. This is one of those shrines."