It’s not just about how we build and how we get around; it’s also what we eat and wear and buy.
It is a standard trope of urbanists that cities are the most sustainable places to live. After David Owen wrote the Green Metropolis I noted that “New Yorkers use less energy and create less greenhouse gases than anyone else in America; that is because they tend to live in smaller spaces with shared walls, have less room to buy and keep stuff, often don’t own cars (or if they do, use them a lot less) and walk a lot.”
© C40 Cities
But a study released earlier this year suggests that we are underestimating the carbon impact of our cities. When your average New Yorker buys a steak or a new shirt, that has an impact too. The report, The Future of Urban Consumption in a 1.5°C World, was released by Arup, C40 Cites and the University of Leeds. I alluded to it in an earlier post on upfront carbon emissions. But recently, I have been revisiting studies on how we get ready for a 1.5 degree lifestyle and achieve sustainable outcomes, and I missed its significance.
The report notes that many cities have done a good job at reducing local emissions. But, as many complained a decade ago about David Owen’s thesis about New Yorkers being green, urban dwellers consume a great deal of stuff from beyond their boundaries.
So it’s not enough to just cut direct emissions, we also have to cut the footprint of all the stuff that we consume. Then the picture changed dramatically:
If we are going to stay within the greenhouse gas budgets and hold the temperature rise to 1.5°C, the report says we have to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and 80 percent by 2050. And that’s not just the emissions from cars and buildings, but also all the things that we consume in that city, from red meat to cars to blue jeans to electronics to leaving on a jet plane.
Buildings and Infrastructure (11 percent of total emissions in C40 cities in 2017)
© Consumption interventions for buildings and infrastructure and associated targets.
The biggest source of emissions is a usual suspect – buildings and infrastructure. Here, the first thing to do is use less steel and concrete, substituting lower carbon materials and just building less. This will be no surprise to TreeHugger regulars.
Food (13 percent)
But the most surprising finding in this report is that food, at 13 percent of emissions, actually has a bigger carbon impact in cities than cars. So we have to cut waste, eat less meat and dairy (preferably none), and even limit calories. I suspect that this will be a hard sell.
Private Transport (8 percent)
Since we are also looking at the emissions from making things as well as using them, the upfront emissions of building cars matters, totally a third of their total emissions. So we need to cut the numbers significantly (ambitiously, to zero), make them last longer, and reduce their weight by half, which could be done easily by banning SUVs and light trucks for non-commercial uses. Surprisingly the report doesn’t mention what we do instead; I assume walking or biking.
Clothing and Textiles (4 percent)
It’s surprising what an impact clothing and textiles have, 4 percent of total emissions. It’s twice as high as aviation. So no more big shopping sprees for fast fashion; ambitiously, no more than three new items per year. Look for a boom in Value Village and other used clothing stores.
Electronics and appliances (3 percent)
Appliances and electronics are going in different directions; most computers can easily last seven years now (my last MacBook is still going strong at 7) but appliances are not lasting nearly as long as they used to. I just replaced a stove after four years because the electronics kept blowing out and it was costing more to fix them than it was to replace the stove. That’s just wrong. Seven years is a minimum!
Aviation (2 percent)
No more flying to conferences for me. I do not understand why it allows any short haul flights; the answer should be zero, take the train. It’s the long-haul flights that are the real difficult problem to solve.
Many will roll their eyes over all this, questioning whether personal consumption by individuals belongs in a discussion of cities. I can already imagine the comments, taking away our freedom to buy new pants. I have been told more than once recently that I shouldn’t be focusing on individual consumption, it’s the big corporations that are causing the problems. But they are making stuff that we consume. It involves all of us.
But given that our consumption is responsible for as much as 85 percent of emissions in our cities, we cannot ignore it. Our personal choices matter more than we ever knew.
If we are going to reduce our emissions enough to keep the temperature rise below 1.5 degrees, it is going to take all of us living the 1.5 degree lifestyle.
