TodayCarbon footprint heavy in local area
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Editorial
Article RatingWe’re starting to get accustomed to bad news on the pollution front for the Harrisburg-Carlisle metropolitan area.
Studies have previously cited lower-than-average air quality in general and high particulate matter content in our local air. Now, there’s a new study from the Brookings Institution that ranks our region ninth among the metro areas with the highest carbon footprint.
Past studies that focused on air pollution gave birth to Carlisle’s local Clean Air Board and prompted reactions from local residents opposed to further warehouse development in the area. While there’s likely to be similar reactions from these quarters, we’d like to point out that this new ranking has much wider implications.
The Associated Press story about the Brookings study points out that the average carbon output per person is 2.87 tons a year. Averaging only the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the country, however, the number drops to 2.47 tons per capita. And those 100 metro regions account for only 56 percent of the country’s total carbon output.
It turns out that higher population density contributes to lower carbon output. In urban areas, people live in smaller spaces that need less energy for heating and cooling, and they are better able to use mass transit, which means less fuel is used to move people around.
There are mitigating factors, however. In the eastern U.S., there is a greater reliance on coal to create electricity, which raises the carbon footprint. In the West, weather is more favorable, hydroelectric power is more common and higher motor fuel prices encourage residents to drive less.
The Harrisburg-Carlisle area’s per-capita average is 3.19 tons, above the national average but a fair amount short of the 3.81 tons per year put out in Lexington, Ky. Considering the factors listed above, we can see that lower population density, limited availability of mass transit and a fair amount of coal-fired electricity contributes to the area’s higher carbon footprint.
The study does not point to immediate health and safety risks in the local area but to the shared burden our entire country has in reducing its output of greenhouse gases to mitigate the effects of global warming.
The implications are far more profound than have been articulated in previous studies about localized air pollution problems — because making progress on our carbon footprint calls for big changes in the way we live. Promoting denser residential living, for example, means modifying a lot of the zoning rules at the local level that now encourage one-house-per-acre residential development.
Finding cleaner sources of electricity in a state historically dependent upon coal-fired power plants will be a struggle. Indeed, the state’s electricity providers have resisted progress in this area, while federal authorities have been lax about requiring existing coal plants to retro-fit with modern pollution controls. Complicating the matter is deregulated electricity pricing, which is scheduled to deliver higher rates to users without any reduction in carbon output.
And our moderate density region resists any easy solutions for mass transit, while state and federal authorities fail to encourage expanded systems with permanent dedicated funding.
The current prices of gasoline, diesel and heating oil are doing a fair amount to push people to reduce their fuel usage through home upgrades and smaller vehicles, but that resolve must persist beyond these immediate price spikes.
Current climate change trends point to accelerated damage to nature habitats, more severe weather extremes and dangerous implications for the earth’s supply of drinkable water. Nobody expects that we will go back to a pre-industrial era way of life, but we do have a duty to provide the best possible stewardship of the only planet we have.
The only important question is whether we will begin reducing our carbon footprint while it can still make a difference.
