organic, locally grown food and fair trade products and driving a
small car a few times a week, I'd better remember that I live
in a big, 250-year old house in the mountains, and that on a per
capita basis, cities use less energy than the inhabited countrysides
of North America and Europe. Or so I learn from an article by Douglas
Foy and Robert Healy in the Boston Globe:
"This may come as a surprise to those who think of environmental
issues largely in the context of wild places and open spaces. Cities,
often congested, dense, and enormous consumers of resources, would
not be the place one might first turn for environmental solutions. In
fact, cities are inherently the 'greenest' of all places. They are
much more efficient in their use of energy, water and land than
suburbs. They provide transportation services in a remarkably
equitable and democratic fashion... New York City, for example, is
the most energy efficient place in America. Yes, it houses 8.2
million citizens and uses an enormous amount of energy to do so. Its
electrical load, more than 12,000 megawatts, is as large as all of
Massachusetts. Yet because the buildings are dense and thus more
efficiently heated and cooled, and because 85 percent of all trips in
Manhattan are on foot, bike or transit, New York City uses
dramatically less energy to serve each of its citizens than does a
state like Massachusetts. Indeed, it uses less energy, on a per
capita basis, than any state in America."
"Cities Are the Answer," Boston Globe/International Herald Tribune,
April 11, 2007.
