Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Study: Rich in US spew more carbon pollution than poor
Rich Americans produce nearly 25% more heat-trapping gases than poorer people at home, according to a comprehensive study of U.S. residential carbon footprints.
Scientists studied 93 million housing units in the nation to analyze how much greenhouse gases are being spewed in different locations and by income, according to a study published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Residential carbon emissions comprise close to one-fifth of global warming gases emitted by the burning of coal, oil and natural gas.
Using federal definitions of income level, the study found that energy use by the average higher income person’s home puts out 6,482 pounds of greenhouse gases a year. For a person in the lower income level, the amount is 5,225 pounds, the study calculated.
“The numbers don’t lie. They show that (with) people who are wealthier generally, there’s a tendency for their houses to be bigger and their greenhouse gas emissions tend to be higher,” said study lead author Benjamin Goldstein, an environmental scientist at the University of Michigan.
In Beverly Hills, the average person puts four times as much heat-trapping gases into the air as someone living in South-Central Los Angeles, where incomes are only a small fraction as much. Similarly, in Massachusetts, the average person in wealthy Sudbury spews 9,700 pounds of greenhouse gases into the air each year, while the average person in the much poorer Dorchester neighborhood in Boston puts out 2,227 pounds a year.
Even though richer Americans produce more heat-trapping gases, “the poor are more exposed to the dangers of the climate crisis, like heat waves, more likely to have chronic medical problems that make them more at risk to be hospitalized or die once exposed to heat, and often lack the resources to protect themselves or access health care,” said Dr. Renee Salas, a Boston physician and Harvard climate health researcher who wasn’t part of the study.
Nine of the 10 states that produce the most heattrapping gas per person rely on coal or have cold weather. West Virginia leads the nation with 10,046 pounds of greenhouse gas per person per year, followed by Oklahoma, Wyoming, North Dakota, Kentucky, Missouri, Iowa, Alabama, South Dakota and Colorado.
California by far is the greenest state with 2,715 pounds of greenhouse gas per person. Oregon, New York, Utah, Washington, Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Idaho, Connecticut and New Mexico round out the 10 cleanest states.
The study’s 25 cleanest zip codes for residential greenhouse gas emissions are in California or New York. The cleanest was Mission Bay in San Francisco, a white-collar area with relatively new housing stock, where the average person produces 1,320 pounds a year.
The zip codes that produced the most gas are scattered across 14 states: Colorado, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Alabama, Louisiana, Wyoming, Maryland, West Virginia, Minnesota, Missouri, Georgia, Arkansas, Indiana and Utah.
Noting that many residents are stuck with the fossil fuel-based energy delivered by their local utility, Goldstein said, “I don’t think we can solve this based on personal choices. We need large scale structural transitions of our energy infrastructure.”