North America polluting twice as much as Europe

You would be wrong if you think that it is cities in general that cause higher levels of greenhouse gas emissions. A recent study has published figures of emissions for 100 cities in 33 countries and concluded that each city’s lifestyle is to blame.

Researchers say that attributing greenhouse gas emissions to particular cities is not helpful in the battle against climate change. Policymakers instead need to better understand the sources of those emissions to develop action plans to tackle the issue.

Comparing Cape Town in South Africa with London in the UK, the study ‘Whose greenhouse gas is it anyway?’ shows that UK capital city has overall lower emissions.

Similarly, the emissions per person in Denver, USA, are double those of people in New York; although the Big Apple has a greater population density it has a much lower dependence on private vehicles for commuting.

Moreover, many European cities’ emissions per person are less than half that of those in some North American cities. In Brazil some wealthy cities have fewer emissions than other Asian or African cities.

“Cities worldwide are blamed for most greenhouse gas emissions but many cities have very low emissions, as do many city dwellers in even the most industrialised countries,” said the study’s lead author Daniel Hoornweg, who is a lead urban specialist on cities and climate change at the World Bank.

He added: “Differences in production and consumption patterns between cities and citizens mean that it is not helpful to attribute emissions to cities as a whole.”

In fact, the paper has demonstrated that calculating greenhouse gas emissions has much to do with whether a city produces or consumes a lot. “Lifestyles and consumption patterns are key drivers of greenhouse gas emissions in far off cities, as in the case of Western consumer demand for Chinese goods,” said Hoornweg.

This means that a high goods producing city such as Shanghai, in China, has low emissions from consumption but it has high emissions from production.

David Satterthwaite, senior fellow at the International Institute for Environment and Development, said that Africa, Asia and Latin American face the challenge of keeping their emissions on a low level even as their wealth grows.

Image courtesy of Globo.

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