Why Are Real Climate Solutions Considered “Unrealistic?”
We need to expand what we consider relevant to the climate change conversation.
I caught up with an urban planner friend of mine recently and, as expected, some version of the old refrain came up almost immediately. You know the line. I’ve written about it before:
“People need to live in cities, because cities are more sustainable.”
There are, of course, a few problems with this line of thinking.
First, yes, the average apartment-dwelling, public-transit-using urbanite does have a lower personal carbon footprint than the average SUV-driving, McMansion-dwelling suburbanite. Sure. Beyond this, however, the argument falls apart.
Whether or not cities are “more sustainable” than some other lifestyle is largely irrelevant to climate change, because our cities are still not sustainable, nor will they likely ever be. Urban areas are responsible for roughly 70% of global CO2 emissions while covering only 2% of the land mass. Not to mention, modern cities themselves are ecological disasters, destroying habitat and biodiversity and polluting air and water. True sustainability cannot be measured by per capita carbon footprint alone, nor is carbon the only relevant issue in the climate crisis.
