this post was submitted on 04 May 2025
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I’ve got a horse but there’s no stables outside my workplace. Walking 50 km to work would take the whole day.
You don't need to live 50km away from where you work. People from before cars would never dream of such an outrageous lifestyle.
That kind of decadence, traveling 50km twice every day, was enabled by unsustainable technology which is killing the biosphere. We need to stop this kind of wasteful excess, or climate collapse will stop it for us. We can have people living 50km away from work, but that 50km needs to be 50km of railway line. It can't be an asphalt road, that's too expensive to the world. The debt is coming due.
My municipality made a study where they looked at the carbon footprint of residents in three different areas. Those with the highest carbon emissions lived right in the city center, next to where they work. The ones in suburbs were right in the middle with respect to carbon dioxide generated by their lifestyle. Lowest were those living 30 km or more away from the city center.
I drive to get to work, nothing else. I don’t drive to the store, I don’t buy clothes, I don’t fly to holiday destinations. I don’t need or want to, since I have everything I love right outside my door. Those who live in cities are statistically those who need to make the largest changes to their lifestyle if we are to save the planet.
https://climateadaptationplatform.com/who-has-the-bigger-carbon-footprint-rural-or-urban-dwellers/
Your link refers to a BBC article which I read. It compares cities with other cities, making the argument that the bigger cities produce less carbon dioxide emissions than smaller cities. The source of data here is a bit mixed but mainly it relies on governmental data for cities of 135,000 people or more. It's hardly rural when there are high-rises. It's also a bit unclear on how emissions are calculated. It includes industrial emissions for the place where the goods are produced, not where the goods are consumed. Generally, consumption is equal to emissions. If a millionaire flies in a private jet, the emissions shouldn't be attributed to those who make the plane or pump oil out of the ground. It's the millionaire who is consuming the plane and fuel that is the polluter.
The BBC article isn't written by a journalist. Its written by a Paul Swinney who "is director of policy and research at Centre for Cities, a think tank dedicated to improving the performance of UK city economies". The article should be viewed as an opinion piece.
In the other source, WNYC Studios, there's a professor Cindy Eisenhower who's being interviewed. She says, and I quote, that "in reality we're finding that -- many studies emerging that would suggest that if we account for all the things that people buy, uhm, that cities oftentimes have higher footprints despite the efficiency gains that relates to living in really dense settlements." Listen to the interview that your source links to at https://www.wnycstudios.org/podcasts/takeaway/segments/urban-versus-rural-carbon-emissions
This is a great example of why secondary sources shouldn't be trusted without verifying what they say. The author of the article you linked clearly misunderstood the interview. What the professor is saying is exactly what my municipality found: that even if people living in rural areas have higher transport emissions in their day-to-day life, a single trip abroad by plane may produce as much emissions as a full year of traveling to work by car. The direct transportation emissions in rural areas are completely offset by higher consumption and overhead emissions in cities.
Living in a city doesn't make someone travel on a plane. That's a correlation, not a causation. If you lived in a city and didn't fly on planes or consume other wasteful luxuries, like drag, then you'd have even lower emissions.
"We" feels like cheating. Have you considered saying "others and drag"?
Groups containing individuals have different pronouns than the people inside.