U.S. households account for one-fifth of the country's total greenhouse gas emissions, thanks partly to Americans' general preference for bigger houses and spacious suburbs. Those preferences also translated into an emissions divide between the rich and the poor, with wealthier households in recent years emitting around 25% more than their lower-income counterparts in smaller homes, the researchers at the University of Michigan said. (Study: bit.ly/3hgPQXO) The study estimated energy use by 93 million U.S. homes, based on details from tax assessor records for 2015 including a house’s size, age, location and construction date. The study revealed a correlation between higher wealth and higher-per-capita energy use and emissions.
Americans may need to rethink how they live, said Benjamin Goldstein, a co-author on the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Structural change is going to be important and necessary,” said Goldstein, a professor 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.
“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 Goldstein, an environmental scientist. “There seems to be a small group of people that are inflicting most of the damage to be honest.”
“That is the key message about emissions patterns,” said University of California San Diego climate policy professor David Victor, who wasn’t part of the study. “I think it raises fundamental justice questions in a society that has huge income inequality.”
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 emergency room physician and Harvard climate health researcher who wasn’t part of the study.
Salas and Sacoby Wilson, a professor of environmental health and epidemiology at the University of Maryland, who also wasn’t part of the study, pointed to studies in Baltimore and other cities showing that because of fewer trees, more asphalt and other issues, temperatures can be more than 10 degrees hotter in poorer neighborhoods.
Builders can consider reducing floor spaces. And residential buildings might reduce using natural gas, a fossil fuel, for heating and cooking, he said. Such measures may be especially important, given that more than 100 million new homes are expected to be built in the next 30 years, while the country’s 328 million population is projected to grow by more than a third in that time. Because the average lifespan of an American house is around 40 years, the United States risks a “carbon lock-in” unless it commits to more energy-efficient homes and neighborhoods, the researchers said.
“We need to have denser and smaller homes,” said Goldstein, who said home sizes in the United States and Canada are abnormally large compared with other rich nations.
Residential carbon emissions are harder to change than those from transportation, where you can trade a gas-guzzler for a cleaner electric vehicle, Goldstein said.
Americans may need to rethink how they live, said Benjamin Goldstein, a co-author on the study published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
“Structural change is going to be important and necessary,” said Goldstein, a professor 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.
“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 Goldstein, an environmental scientist. “There seems to be a small group of people that are inflicting most of the damage to be honest.”
“That is the key message about emissions patterns,” said University of California San Diego climate policy professor David Victor, who wasn’t part of the study. “I think it raises fundamental justice questions in a society that has huge income inequality.”
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 emergency room physician and Harvard climate health researcher who wasn’t part of the study.
Salas and Sacoby Wilson, a professor of environmental health and epidemiology at the University of Maryland, who also wasn’t part of the study, pointed to studies in Baltimore and other cities showing that because of fewer trees, more asphalt and other issues, temperatures can be more than 10 degrees hotter in poorer neighborhoods.
Builders can consider reducing floor spaces. And residential buildings might reduce using natural gas, a fossil fuel, for heating and cooking, he said. Such measures may be especially important, given that more than 100 million new homes are expected to be built in the next 30 years, while the country’s 328 million population is projected to grow by more than a third in that time. Because the average lifespan of an American house is around 40 years, the United States risks a “carbon lock-in” unless it commits to more energy-efficient homes and neighborhoods, the researchers said.
“We need to have denser and smaller homes,” said Goldstein, who said home sizes in the United States and Canada are abnormally large compared with other rich nations.
Residential carbon emissions are harder to change than those from transportation, where you can trade a gas-guzzler for a cleaner electric vehicle, Goldstein said.
Noting that many residents are stuck with the fossil fuel-based energy delivered by their local utility, he said, “I don’t think we can solve this based on personal choices. We need large scale structural transitions of our energy infrastructure.”
https://apnews.com/be099434a414a0cb647640ce45f8e6fc
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