City By City Comparisons of Per Capita Carbon Emissions

Climate Feedback has a very interesting post of the different city by city per capita carbon emissions:


It does make sense to compare the per capita CO2 emissions of Mexico City and Los Angeles (see figure below) to illuminate the debate on shared but differentiated responsibilities on greenhouse gases emissions and show that just as urban centers register different levels and paths of economic development, cities do not contribute at the same level to global warming. For instance, the real GDP per capita of Los Angeles (US$40,031) is almost 3 times that of Mexico City (US$13,470). The paradox here is that many of those urban centers with almost negligible contributions to the greenhouse gases in the atmosphere are more vulnerable to the negative impacts of climate change are. One reason of this relates to the local level of expenditures per capita in Mexico City, which are similarly tiny when compared with those of Los Angeles. In such conditions, the binding constraint for this and other cities of the developing world is the lack of economic resources from peoples’ taxes and of economic growth to deal with any component of the climate agenda.


It is also illustrative to compare LA to European cities - and even to Berkeley. Not necessarily because the real GDP per capita of Los Angeles is twice that of Berlin ($US 21,432) -rather because the urbanization patterns in cities from high-income nations as Stockholm, Tokyo, and Berlin (with lower levels of GHG emissions) suggest that there is not necessarily an inevitable relationship between rising incomes, increasing use of private cars and increasing GHG emissions. Such institutional factors as urban planning policies that favor alternatives to auto transport, by providing high quality transit systems and raising environmental awareness may be key drivers of these differences. The conclusion we can draw from these is that policies and institutional settings matter as mechanisms to move our cities to less carbon intensive pathways of development.


Read it all.

I think both observations are important. First, the comparison to European cities shows that the United States can make progress toward carbon emission reductions while maintaining a high standard of living. Second, while the potential growth in developing countries (particularly China and India) presents a real challenge to reducing future emissions, right now the large share of emissions come from the industrialized cities of the West.

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