Fighting Climate Change With Sensible City Planning
According to Department of Energy estimates, about 39 percent of America’s carbon emissions come from commercial and residential buildings; over 33 percent come from transportation, the majority of that amount from passenger and freight traffic – moving people and goods around and in between our communities. That’s over 70 percent of our carbon emissions directly influenced by the built environment. We ignore the character and future of our built environment at our peril.
Transportation emissions are especially significant in our cities and suburbs. Research shows that we typically use more energy and thus emit more carbon getting to and from office buildings than we do heating, cooling, lighting and maintaining them. This is due in no small part to the fact that so many new office buildings have been built on completely car-dependent sites on the fringe of our metro areas. The pattern holds true for suburban residential buildings as well: data show that transportation energy so dwarfs building energy that even those suburban households with energy-efficient homes and cars use more energy and emit more carbon than ordinary households in urban, transit-served locations.
Read more via Huffington Post