Save the Planet: Move to the City!

A few months ago I got into an argument with my father over Sunday lunch. He was claiming that hybrid cars are actually worse for the environment because it takes more energy to produce them than a regular gas-guzzling car. I was irate. Dad couldn't cite any sources (Bad Daddy!--Haven't your daughters taught you anything?!). But when I later researched the subject, turns out he was at least partly right. Here are a few other environmental facts that may surprise you: cattle raised to organic standards produce more methane gas than regular cattle, cooling a home in Arizona produces less CO2 emissions than warming a house in New England, and Honolulu and Los Angeles are the two cities that emit the least amount of carbon dioxide per capita in the US.

Surprised by that last one? Here's writer Jonah Leher in Seed on the topic:

When most of us think about environmentally friendly places, we imagine rural landscapes and bucolic open spaces. We picture a terrain untouched by concrete. Cities, in contrast, seem like ecological nightmares. They are densities of pollution, artificial environments where nature consists of cockroaches, pigeons and florist shops. But, according to Bettencourt and West, the conventional wisdom is exactly backwards. Cities are bastions of environmentalism. People who live in densely populated places lead environmentally friendly lives. They consume fewer resources per person and take up less space. (On average, city dwellers use about half as much electricity as people living outside the city limits.) The typical Manhattanite generates 30 percent less CO2 than the typical American.