EarthLab's List of Top Green U.S. Cities for 2007

[PhxSprawler]

Originally Posted by 10023

This actually brings up an interesting point - does this study reflect metropolitan areas or just the cities themselves? I would assume the latter, but obviously each would lead to vastly different conclusions.

Based on the results given when I took the test, it appears to be based on city, not metropolitan area. I am sure Los Angeles has a much lower carbon footprint than its regional neighbors.

[Tom In Chicago]

brian_b - Chicago is 93% nuclear. . .

I'm interested to know what the source of this fact might be. . .

. . .

[10023]

Here's a cool graphic related to the current discussion. Courtesy of Metropolis 2020, which has a huge collection of great graphics on a bunch of urban planning topics here: http://www.mapsinthepublicsquare.org/

It's a PDF unfortunately so I can't actually post the photo:
http://www.mapsinthepublicsquare.org...o2-map-chi.pdf


The difference between the two is that one is defined by where the emissions are produced, the other is defined by who is producing them. The most obvious result of this is that emissions from cars driven by suburbanites who are stuck in traffic on their way downtown are attributed to the suburban area where they live, rather than the city neighborhood they happen to be driving through on the way to work.

[MayorOfChicago]

214/4.3

[SD_Phil]

Originally Posted by 10023

Here's a cool graphic related to the current discussion. Courtesy of Metropolis 2020, which has a huge collection of great graphics on a bunch of urban planning topics here: http://www.mapsinthepublicsquare.org/

It's a PDF unfortunately so I can't actually post the photo:
http://www.mapsinthepublicsquare.org...o2-map-chi.pdf

That IS a very cool map.

[alex1]

Originally Posted by Nowhereman1280

No, actually Chicago's summers are not more humid than New York's, how could an inland city be more humid than a city right on the ocean? Chicago, on average, only gets 5 more inches of snow a year than New York City, I wouldn't say 5 more inches makes our winters snowier.

The Atlantic ocean is much much warmer than Lake Michigan, therefore it does not have the same cooling effect as the lake does in the summer.

I now live in CT, 70 miles north of new York and I can concur with Crawford that winters in chicago are colder.

[Pandemonious]

I score a 180/2.3. Pretty low. Almost identical to what Steely Dan scored, likely because we live in the same area and have seemingly similar lifestyles.

I am sure my one plane trip a year, and not using CFL lighting hurt my score. I try to avoid flying at all costs, as it is hectic, uncomfortable, and at many times overly expensive.

We really need some high speed bullet trains in this country.. Amtrak, while I use it.. just isn't fast enough.

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by 10023

These all make sense, at least in terms of inclusion, with the exception of LA. Can't imagine how that place works its way into a "green cities" list.

My score was 318, but I don't know how it's that high. I don't own a car, I'm never home (so lights and electronics are rarely on), I walk or take the subway, I live in an apartment with roommates (separate bedrooms, but shared common areas), etc. How much of an effect does flying 20-30 times a year have? It can't even approach the impact of driving.

My ECP score is 210 and my carbon output is 4.5.

Very simple: There are a lot of people that live in LA t that never have to heat or cool thier homes. Additionally, there are many people in LA that, like me, live with somebody in a one bedroom condo in a building that recycles. We also share one car quite easily. We also unplug electrical when not in use and have energy efficient bulbs and eat local and orgainc food. Since this compiles the information by zip code apparently a lot of people in LA live like me.

[GeorgeLV]

Originally Posted by Cirrus

I'm taking this now and it is really biased towards the suburban lifestyle. For example:

TRUE/FALSE: I use a manual/electric lawnmower

False, because I don't have a lawn to mow. If I leave it blank, however, it negatively affects my score because it assumes I use a gas mower (I tested it).

All in all: I'm not impressed with the questionnaire. It left far too much out and what it did manage to cover wasn't valid.

My score, correcting as possible for biases such as the lawnmower question (that is, I checked it even though I don’t have a lawn), my score is 177 and my carbon output is 2.3.

Thanks for convincing me not to bother to register with the site to take the test. I don't have a lawn to mow, nor do most of my neighbors. If they can make such a huge flawed assumption, I have to assume the rest of their methodology is dubious.

[JManc]

i recycle everything, rarely drive (i work from home), cheap with the AC/ heat, use CFL bulbs in the lamps i tend to always leave on and still scored 300.

[Don B.]

Here's the standings so far (the first number is the Greenlab score; the last number is the carbon footprint, expressed in tons of carbon dioxide):

593 - Don B. (32.8)
453 - PhxSprawler
318 - 10023
300 - Jmancuso
272 - MayDay (9.5)
254 - SD Phil (7.4)
233 - ski82 (5.7)
225 - alex1 (5.6)
215 - edluva (5.0)
214 - MayorOfChicago (4.3)
208 - antinimby (4.3)
180 - dktshb (4.5)
180 - Pandemonius (2.3)
180 - Steely Dan (2.0)
177 - Cirrus (2.3)
170 - POLA (1.3)
158 - Nowhereman1280 (0.8)

In other words, I pollute more than the nine bottom forumers combined.

I suspect these differences, while partly related to choices we make in our lives, are largely due to the vast differences in age. Most forumers on here are considerably younger, rent and live in large urban cities without a car. In other words, how I lived when I was 22 years old, but that was almost twenty years ago. Because we are at different stages in our lives, it will skew the numbers. Comparing a 17 year old living in his mom's garage to 40 year olds with lives, careers, mortgages and debt, it is apples and oranges. This isn't to say that we can't do a better job of conserving, but the disparities in the list don't reflect where we are at in our lives. An 88-year-old living in a nursing home probably has a smaller footprint than the average 55-year old, and so forth.

Part of this is the big-assed home my partner and I have (3,700 square feet), in a high-energy usage area (the desert southwest with massive energy demands in the summer to cool). We own three vehicles (I own one relatively fuel efficient car and my partner has two vehicles), plus we have another vacation home 90 miles north that we spend a lot of time at (we are there right now as I type this).

We are selling that big home to downsize and one of the cars is going away, so that should reduce our carbon footprint considerably.

--don

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Don B.

I suspect these differences, while partly related to choices we make in our lives, are largely due to the vast differences in age. Most forumers on here are considerably younger, rent and live in large urban cities without a car. In other words, how I lived when I was 22 years old, but that was almost twenty years ago. Because we are at different stages in our lives, it will skew the numbers. Comparing a 17 year old living in his mom's garage to 40 year olds with lives, careers, mortgages and debt, it is apples and oranges. This isn't to say that we can't do a better job of conserving, but the disparities in the list don't reflect where we are at in our lives. An 88-year-old living in a nursing home probably has a smaller footprint than the average 55-year old, and so forth.

age probably does play a role in this for some people here, but i didn't score in the bottom of the list because i'm some "17 year old living in his mom's garage". i'm a 31 year old man with a life, a career, a mortgage, and debt, and i scored low because of the choices i have made in my life to lessen my impact on the environment. some of those choices entail ditching the car and living in a small centrally located downtown condo so that my mobility needs are met by my feet, my bike, and public transit. if i wanted to, i could afford to buy a much larger home for myself out in the boondocks and buy a car and drive 30 miles a day each way to get to work, but i CHOOSE not to do those things because of the priorities i have set out for my life, not because i'm some dumb kid who hasn't yet achieved anything in life.

being a grown-up is no excuse for being irresponsibly wasteful.

[VivaLFuego]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

being a grown-up is no excuse for being irresponsibly wasteful.

Indeed. How to combat the accepted cultural wisdom that what we're supposed to do as we "grow up" and acquire wealth, start families, etc amounts to, essentially, a wasteful lifestyle of overconsumption of scarce energy?

[Echo Park]

Your Ecp Score Is: 207 Your Carbon Output Is: 4.4

[Attrill]

ECP Score is: 246
CARBON OUTPUT IS: 7.5

Having to fly for work is what hurt me the most.

[newboldphilly]

The ocean temps off New York are little different than those in Lake Michigan during the summer. In the winter the water temps rarely fall below 40 degrees.

That, and when those humid southeasterlies are blowing in Philadelphia, NYC gets the AC turned on and even with southwesterlies you can still find relief in B'klyn and parts of Queens.

Originally Posted by Gordo

New York doesn't siphon billions of gallons of water away from natural watersheds and then pump it into the ocean?

the new york reservoir system is in the same watershed as NYC. So is the Catskill aqueduct. All of that water falls as rain in the Hudson valley. All of that water would make it's way down the Hudson and right past Manhattan anyway. They take slightly less than half of their water from the Delaware River - not because the Hudson doesn't have enough water but because the water from Hudson Valley reservoirs is too muddy and the water from the Hudson River itself is too polluted (PCBs) from General Electric's legacy.

They could take more water from the Catskills but it's cheaper and easier to take it from the Delaware.

This is also a gravity fed system - there's not a whole lot of energy consumed in the process.

[Gordo]

Originally Posted by newboldphilly

the new york reservoir system is in the same watershed as NYC. So is the Catskill aqueduct. All of that water falls as rain in the Hudson valley. All of that water would make it's way down the Hudson and right past Manhattan anyway. They take slightly less than half of their water from the Delaware River - not because the Hudson doesn't have enough water but because the water from Hudson Valley reservoirs is too muddy and the water from the Hudson River itself is too polluted (PCBs) from General Electric's legacy.

They could take more water from the Catskills but it's cheaper and easier to take it from the Delaware.

This is also a gravity fed system - there's not a whole lot of energy consumed in the process.

The same could be said about the Colorado River system in regards to Las Vegas - my point was that ALL large cities require massive infrastructure to care for water needs. Just because a city is in a drier climate than another does not make that city "less green". There are MANY factors that set New York behind other cities in "greenness" - such as the amount of heating/cooling and the vast distances food must be shipped into the city (and region).

[JManc]

but ditching the car and living in a condo right in the middle of the city typically isn't an option for most people.

[Attrill]

Originally Posted by Gordo

The same could be said about the Colorado River system in regards to Las Vegas - my point was that ALL large cities require massive infrastructure to care for water needs. Just because a city is in a drier climate than another does not make that city "less green".

The thing to look at is the impact the water drawn out from a river has on the environment. In a drier environment you will almost always see a huge impact on water being rmoved from a watershed. The Colorado river is a perfect example of a destroyed ecosystem:

Prior to the construction of major dams along its route, the Colorado River fed one of the largest desert estuaries in the world. Spread across the northernmost end of the Gulf of California, the Colorado River delta’s vast riparian, freshwater, brackish, and tidal wetlands once covered 1,930,000 acres (7,810 km²) and supported a large population of plant, bird, and marine life...........

The loss of freshwater flows to the delta over the twentieth century has reduced delta wetlands to about 5 percent of their original extent, and nonnative species have compromised the ecological health of much of what remains. Stress on ecosystems has allowed invasive plants to out compete native species along Colorado River riparian areas. Native forests of cottonwood and willow have yielded to sand and mudflats dominated by the nonnative tamarisk (also known as salt cedar), arrowweed, and iodinebush, a transformation that has decreased the habitat value of the riparian forest (Briggs and Cornelius, 1997).

Not very green, literally. There is an abundance of water in the Hudson and Delaware, and the massive amounts NY takes out doesn't have the nearly the same impact a smaller amount does in a drier climate.

[dktshb]

Originally Posted by Don B.

Here's the standings so far (the first number is the Greenlab score; the last number is the carbon footprint, expressed in tons of carbon dioxide):

593 - Don B. (32.8)
453 - PhxSprawler
318 - 10023
300 - Jmancuso
272 - MayDay (9.5)
254 - SD Phil (7.4)
233 - ski82 (5.7)
225 - alex1 (5.6)
215 - edluva (5.0)
214 - MayorOfChicago (4.3)
208 - antinimby (4.3)
180 - dktshb (4.5)
180 - Pandemonius (2.3)
180 - Steely Dan (2.0)
177 - Cirrus (2.3)
170 - POLA (1.3)
158 - Nowhereman1280 (0.8)

In other words, I pollute more than the nine bottom forumers combined.

I suspect these differences, while partly related to choices we make in our lives, are largely due to the vast differences in age. Most forumers on here are considerably younger, rent and live in large urban cities without a car. In other words, how I lived when I was 22 years old, but that was almost twenty years ago. Because we are at different stages in our lives, it will skew the numbers. Comparing a 17 year old living in his mom's garage to 40 year olds with lives, careers, mortgages and debt, it is apples and oranges. This isn't to say that we can't do a better job of conserving, but the disparities in the list don't reflect where we are at in our lives. An 88-year-old living in a nursing home probably has a smaller footprint than the average 55-year old, and so forth.

Part of this is the big-assed home my partner and I have (3,700 square feet), in a high-energy usage area (the desert southwest with massive energy demands in the summer to cool). We own three vehicles (I own one relatively fuel efficient car and my partner has two vehicles), plus we have another vacation home 90 miles north that we spend a lot of time at (we are there right now as I type this).

We are selling that big home to downsize and one of the cars is going away, so that should reduce our carbon footprint considerably.

--don

Actually mine were 210 and (4.5), but hey, that's still pretty good. I am 37 with a mortgage. I chose a different path in LA that is enjoyable to me that happens to use less energy... albeit by default. Ironically it was my early 20's living in a 4 bedroom plus den house in Scottsdale Ranch in Scottsdale AZ... it wasn't for me.