Greenest Place in the U.S.
October 29, 2009If I told you that the Greenest place in the U.S. was Burlington, Vermont you would probably nod your head and say that makes sense.
Vermont has an abundance of trees, farms, backyard compost heaps, and environmentally aware citizens, and no crowded expressways or big, dirty cities. Sounds Green right? Well, yes, but no.
According to a Yale 360 article, “Vermont, in many important ways, sets a poor environmental example. Spreading people thinly across the countryside, Vermont-style, may make them look and feel green, but it actually increases the damage they do to the environment while also making that damage harder to see and to address. In the categories that matter the most, Vermont ranks low in comparison with many other American places. It has no truly significant public transit system (other than its school bus routes), and, because its population is so dispersed, it is one of the most heavily automobile-dependent states in the country. A typical Vermonter consumes 545 gallons of gasoline per year — almost a hundred gallons more than the national average.”
So now the big surprise, the Greenest place in the U.S. – drum roll please.
NEW YORK CITY
That’s right, the big apple, the city that never sleeps, The melting pot… This hustling and bustling metropolis is harnessing the power of compactness to reign greenly supreme.
Don’t believe us? Read an additional excerpt from the article, it will start to make sense. “The key to New York City’s relative environmental benignity is the very thing that, to most Americans, makes it appear to be an ecological nightmare: its extreme compactness. Moving people and their daily destinations close together reduces their need for automobiles, makes efficient public transit possible, and restores walking as a viable form of transportation. (Dense urban cores are among the few places left in America where people still routinely go around on foot; in the suburbs, you seldom see anyone walking who is actually traveling to a destination rather than merely moving between a building and a vehicle or trying to lose weight.)
Population density also lowers energy and water use in all categories, constrains family size, limits the consumption of all kinds of goods, reduces ownership of wasteful appliances, decreases the generation of solid waste, and forces most residents to live in some of the world’s most inherently energy-efficient residential structures: apartment buildings. As a result, New Yorkers have the smallest carbon footprints in the United States: 7.1 metric tons of greenhouse gases per person per year, or less than 30 percent of the national average. Manhattanites generate even less.”
And there you have it! We recommend reading the full article to get the whole gist, but, apparently New Yorkers have more to be proud of than just the great food, entertainment and some of the best people watching on the planet. Perhaps we should add a new nickname – The Green Apple!
