Why New York City is Greener Than Vermont

[cali]

By Claire Suddath Thursday, Sep. 24, 2009

New Yorkers, take heart: your city is a den of dirt and grime and gluttony no more. According to David Owen, author of Green Metropolis: What the City Can Teach the Country About True Sustainability, the Big Apple is actually greenest city in America. Residents of New York City walk more, drive less and leave a significantly smaller carbon footprint than people living anywhere else in America — even Vermont. Owen talks to TIME about the wastefulness of rural life, why local produce isn't environmentally friendly and the one good thing to come out of the 2008-2009 recession.
(See "The Green Design 100.")


How is the city greener than the country?
When we move people closer to one another and their daily destinations, they become less dependent on automobiles and energy consumption goes down. New York City residents are by far the biggest users of public transit in the United States. But things have to be close enough together to make using a subway or bus worthwhile. Where I live in Connecticut, everything is so spread out that there's no way I could take a bus. It's much easier for me to use a car.

How has the car changed the way we consume energy?
In 1949 only 3% of American households had more than one car. Now there are more cars on the road than there are licensed drivers. When we think about cars we tend to think only of the energy they consume directly, the gasoline. It's certainly significant, but the truly problematic form of energy consumption related to cars is what they allow us to do, which is spread out. We get oversized houses that require huge inputs of water and energy. They let us live 50 or 100 miles away form the place where we work. They require us to build roads, waterlines, power mains and sewage systems out to all these outposts we've created. We have this extraordinarily redundant infrastructure we've built because cars have let us do it.

<snip>

Portland, Ore. and Vermont pride themselves as being eco-friendly, but you argue that they're not as green as they think. How so?
Everyone thinks of Vermont as the greenest state in the country. But if you took the population of New York City, all 8.2 million people, and spread them out so that they had the same population density as Vermont, you'd need a land area equivalent to the six New England states plus New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia. Environmental impact is higher per capita in Vermont than it is in New York City. They use more electricity, more oil, more water. The average Vermonter burns 540 gallons of gasoline per year and the average Manhattanite burns just 90. Only 8% of American households don't own a car. In Manhattan, it's about 77%. Backyard compost heaps not withstanding, Vermont's environmental impacts are greater.

<snip>

http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1925797,00.html

[tavalon]

1. Well, that was depressing

[cali]

2. it's also utterly ridiculous

What is the author suggesting? That we only live in megacities except for factory farms and those who labor there?

[HamdenRice]

3. This has been well known in the environmental field for a long time

Just consider the difference between heating a stand alone home in the distant suburbs to heating a small apartment surrounded by other apartments. Also, every person living in an apartment in New York is a person not destroying a 1/4 acre or more of northeast woodland. All cities are greener than suburbs, exurbs and rural areas.

What makes New York especially green, though is the subway system and the culture of walking and taking mass transit. New Yorkers think nothing of walking a mile or more in the city, and when people visit us from out of town they literally can't take the physical exertion that we don't even think about.

That's why so many New Yorkers are thin.

[cali]

5. perhaps so, but he forgot some important facts.

The air quality in VT is far better than in NY, for example. Beyond, that, yes of course Vermonters consume more electricity, oil and water. About the latter, so what? Water we have in great abundance. The climate is a great deal colder in VT than in NYC, and yeah, there's no public transportation to speak of. But really, what's his solution? That we all live in megacities? No thank you. Vermont has an unspoiled landscape and organic farming is very successful here. Comparing NYC and Vermont is just absurd.

[MichellesBFF]

6. A few stats about Vermont

Total energy consumption in Vermont is the lowest of any State in the Nation.
Vermont is one of only two States in the country with no coal-fired power plants.
The same web site then said that NYS has a very low energy usage because of the public transportation system.

I live in NY, but visit Vermont often.

[taterguy]

8. One of the states with the fewest number of people has a low total amount of energy consumption?

What are the odds?

[HamdenRice]

9. Vermont has very little "unspoiled" landscape

and hasn't for hundreds of years. That's really the point. People who live in rural areas don't seem to realize the impact they are having on their environment. If all the people of Vermont moved to Staten Island, then perhaps Vermont could revert to unspoiled landscape.

[cali]

11. that clearly depends on your definition of unspoiled. Your definition

appears to be untouched by humans. That's an absurd definition. Vermont has little pollution and the most stringent environmental protection laws in the country.

[HamdenRice]

14. Facts are facts. The claims made in the article are uncontroversial

from an environmental perspective. All those quaint Vermont dairy farms represent the absence of northeast forest, and the reliance on cars in places like Vermont basically take them completely out of the league of cities in terms of total environmental impact.

How often do you walk to the grocery store? I own a car and haven't driven it in about 6 months.

[cali]

17. uh, wrong. you seem to have a very odd idea of Vermont

First of all there aren't that many dairy farms left- quaint or not. And the dairy farm has helped preserver the Vermont landscape. And there's hardly a paucity of Northern Forest in Northern New England. As for driving. I rarely drive. I go to town no more than twice a week and always with a neighbor. When I worked in MOntpelier, I car pooled, as do many in my village.

But really, the whole comparison is absurd. Apples and oranges.

[HamdenRice]

21. Urbanization is one of the biggest trends on the planet

And the point of these studies is for people not to think that urbanization is something that needs to be limited for the sake of the environment. It does have an important policy point -- urbanization is good for the planet.

It's good to hear that you don't drive much. My cousins in rural Virginia drive (or used to drive) like crazy, just to go to the grocery store or the movies, and that's a fairly common pattern in rural and exurban areas.

The real bottom line issue is cars. New Yorkers don't drive, as the article points out, and without cars we're in a completely different environmental universe.

Btw, one of the ways your post points out that New England is generally better than other rural areas is that it was settled, and continues to be settled, according to the "village" and "town square" pattern, so it combines some of the efficiencies of urban life with rural life. But that's pretty much limited to New England. It is also the basis of the architectural movement called "New Urbanism," which is actually urbanized suburbanism.

[Obamanaut]

4. Does mildew contribute to the green hue? nt

[islandmkl]

7. how about all the farms in NYC? are they growing all that food in the subways tubes...

or on the top of the apartment buildings?

the article is informative and interesting...taken from available facts on the wikipedia page "Transportation in New York City", apparently...

the author conveniently 'forgets' to address complete areas of other factors that might define a more-comprehensive 'green'...

like, how small is NYC's carbon footprint when you operate the equipment out in Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, hell, rural New York, etc. to harvest and produce that food necessary for sustenance...and ship it to NY...who gets stuck with THAT carbon footprint?

[HamdenRice]

13. Probably much lower than the footprint of food shipped to the burbs

Of course NYC's food is shipped in. So is the food in most rural and suburban areas, so there probably is no net increase in carbon involved in shipping to NYC.

In fact, if you look at NYC's food distribution system it's probably lower. Because it's a foodie city with lots of immigrants who eat fresh veggies, we have an unusual system that involves very large wholesale markets (like Hunts Point and you may have heard of the now gone Fulton Fish Market). Food is then purchased by thousands of small scale grocers (eg our famous "Korean grocers"), fishmongers and butchers (yup we still have neighborhood fishmarkets and butchers). Bringing all that food to one place (the Bronx) is cheaper than the widespread delivery system in most of the country, involving trucking to thousands of spread out Walmarts, Pathmarks, etc.

[islandmkl]

15. you might be right...but "bringing all that food to one place..." is not exactly valid...

where it comes from, distances involved, etc. might have more impact...in your 'probably' scenario, all that food somehow gets to NYC without "..the widespread delivery system in most of the country..."

...really? how?

[HamdenRice]

16. The food in rural areas has to travel the same distances

I have relatives who live in rural Virginia. When I was a kid, people there ate lots of fresh, locally produced food, especially pork and dairy products.

Now, they buy from supermarkets that sell the same stuff from California and Mexico that ends up in NYC. My point is that in a comparison of the footprint of their food to our food, it makes little difference if you are shipping from California or Florida to rural Virginia or shipping from California or Florida to New York. In fact, if you can ship massive amounts of food to one place (Bronx Terminal Market, for example) where small scale retailers then distribute it, then there is probably a lower transportation carbon footprint than if you have to ship it to 100 Wallmarts spread all over rural Virginia.

Remember the article is about a comparison, not a claim that NYC has no carbon footprint.

[customerserviceguy]

19. Well said

Mass transit alone doesn't make an area "green". I'm sure New Yorkers have all kinds of creative ways to waste energy that the average Vermonter wouldn't even know about.

[Libertas1776]

26. Behold! The Fro-Yo trash

of NYC Yuppies.


But don't worry, its totally cool. The cups are eco-friendly and biodegradable. :sarcasm:

More: http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/2009/04/16000-cups.html

[HamdenRice]

27. More than made up for by ...

If you're going to talk about take out, I suspect New York is one of the few places where much of the Chinese and pizza take out is delivered by bicycle.

One restaurant delivering take out by bicycle compared to a car in the exurbs basically makes up for all the cup cake litter you could find.

[customerserviceguy]

28. Did those foodstuffs

that the Chinese and pizza restaurants turn into their wares get delivered to those restaurants by bicycle? More likely, it was an idling delivery truck that caused more people to idle behind it while waiting to get past it.

Who generates less waste, the city people who do a lot of takeout, with it's ubiquitous disposable containers, or country folks who cook a great proportion of their meals at home?

Cities are full of people with vastly wasteful habits. It's just that they're different ones than folks in the sticks have.

[HamdenRice]

29. Looks like the environmental experts disagree with you

I've read this statistic many times over the last 2 decades, and I'm going to go with the environmental experts on this one over the opinion of a poster on a message board.

And, btw, local non-fast food restaurants are quite efficient compared to homes. It's similar to heating an apartment building compared to heating an individual home. Bulk heating of food is more efficient than the single family dinner. Moreover, our ethnic restaurants use everything -- the nasty bits, the offal, bones, etc., for stock, sauces and ju.

[customerserviceguy]

30. It all depends on what the "experts" are looking at

I agree, heating up large quantities of food is more efficient than heating up couple-size or even family size portions. But there is a lot of waste in making, transporting, and disposing of containers, rather than just putting something on a plate from a pot or pan in a home's kitchen.

Also, in the colder months, the excess heat generated in a home's kitchen helps to warm the house. In large cities, you often have heat that the building management provides, that just gets wasted because people who like it cooler cannot control the temperature of their apartment, so they open windows and just let it go outside.

If you don't look at things like that, you get an incorrect picture of the true costs of city dwellers.

[HamdenRice]

31. I'm assuming that over two decades, the environmental experts have got the ...

carbon and other environmental impact accounting right. Outside a corner of DU, this is not a controversial claim.

[customerserviceguy]

32. And this is a Time magazine article

It's not hard to fool the mainstream media with junk science, or someone like this author who is trying to sell a book to a bunch of people who want to feel morally superior to someone else. This particular author seems exclusively focused on automobile transportation, and I suspect that he's biased to see that as the main part of being green.

I don't think he's considered the gasoline and diesel fuel purchased outside of NYC that go into the driving that happens in that city. Since the price of fuel is about fifty cents a gallon lower in NJ than in NYC, a lot gets purchased by suburbanites who drive into the city, and are not measured in his calculations.

[Libertas1776]

10. So,

I should live like Manhattanites in order to be considered eco-friendly. Well, it might be kinda hard right now considering you got to make over 100 Grand easy just to be considered middle class at best in Manhattan...that, or live in Section 8 housing.



I'd take VT any day over NY, thank you very much, and I live in the NY Metro area.

[HamdenRice]

23. Manhattan is a small part of New York

New York is really mostly Brooklyn and Queens, and you don't need a lot of money to live in the outer boroughs. Yet most of these boroughs, plus the Bronx, have the same efficiencies (density) as Manhattan.

I thought it was weird that the article veered off from discussing "New York City" to discussing "Manhattan."

That said, one of the really huge efficiences of Manhattan is that much of island from Mid Town to Wall Street is heated and cooled by steam which is a waste product from our local power plant -- ie co-generation -- which would simply be wasted in most other power generation situations. (That's why so many movies show steam rising from the streets of Manhattan -- that's a result of Con Ed's steam pipes which go into most buildings in the area.

We don't use co generation in the outer boroughs.

[Libertas1776]

25. "You don't need a lot of money to live in the outer boroughs."

At the rate they have been gentrifying Brooklyn and to a lesser extent Queens, you'd be surprised.
But, yeah, you're right, it was weird of them to veer off. They seem to want you to think that the environmental impacts of both Manhattan and the outer boroughs are pretty much the same. I am sure boroughs like Queens, but also Staten Island which is basically the suburbs, have a greater carbon footprint and plenty own and use cars to get around, instead of public transit.

[JHB]

12. Some good points, but really off in others (like the dismissiveness about "buy local food")...

In Green Metropolis you talk about how corn grown for biofuel raises the price of corn used for food. You also say that eating locally grown food isn't practical for everyone.
Locavorism as a consumption preference makes sense. Right now where I am, locally grown apples are coming up. Peach season just ended. I enjoy eating that stuff. But the environmental argument doesn't hold up. I watched a documentary about Portland, Ore. and in it there was a woman who drove her minivan 25 miles to a local farm to buy a few days' worth of produce. So that's a 50-mile round trip for maybe 10 lbs. of groceries. Whatever sense of environmental sainthood she felt was vastly outweighed by the energy of using an entire minivan to collect a few days' worth of produce.

That's it? One anecdote with no claim to being representative?

How about the reverse: Trucks from local farms coming in and selling at green markets? Just on its face that strikes me as a tad more efficient. Or co-ops, also making grouped delivery runs to their partners?

Then there's encouraging community gardens (rather than tearing them up, a rather anti-"green" bit of history in NYC), eh?

Sure, the city will still be a net importer of food, but environmental and economic gains can be made with the above practices. And health gains too.

[Captain Hilts]

18. There are energy economies of scale in NY that Vermont does not have. Cities are good. nt

[caraher]

20. Taking it as Vermont vs. NYC misses the point

Really, this is an indictment of the suburbs. Of course NYC can't feed itself, and of course people in rural areas - where food is grown - will have a larger per-capita carbon footprint due to travel. We need both great cities and the countryside to function as a society.

The killer is the car culture that militates against compact communities and causes intrinsically wasteful sprawl. There's no sound reason for too many suburbs. Their growth comes from a system of perverse incentives - the pyramid scheme of the real estate market, the "white flight" that gutted many cities. We need to think more intentionally about how we ought to live. Noting the very real positives of New York City - available public transit, compact neighborhoods where one can meet one's needs largely on foot - can help us develop in saner ways moving forward.

[HamdenRice]

24. +1

[Odin2005]

22. I have just bought a book called "Green Metropolis" making this same point.