It was a long held belief that the rural inhabitant was living the environmental life; after all, they live the closest to it. A rustic life surrounded by wilderness seems ideal, but has led to sprawl and "extreme commuters," people who spend more than three hours a day driving. A city dweller commutes less and more likely to use mass transit or the most energy efficient mode of transportation available: the counterweight elevator. A 2008 report by the Brookings Institute found that the average American city dweller has a 14 percent smaller carbon footprint than their rural counterpart. The worst carbon offending city in the United States, Washington D.C., is still under the national average for carbon emissions.
Depending on how you assign carbon emissions, this advice can change radically. Consider the consumer living in downtown Chicago, who just recently purchased a television made in rural Illinois. Typically, the carbon emission footprint would be counted along with the other emissions of the small town in Illinois. But in a recent report, Finnish researchers would argue that the emission should be attributed to the consumer, not the manufacturer. As urban dwellers tend to consume more and manufacturing tends to be rurally located, this carbon realignment may mean the city dweller is not the greenest after all.
If you've been considering moving to the city and want to make an effort to be greener, now may be the time to move. But if what the Finnish researchers argue dissuades you, take it not as a reason to remain rural, but as a lesson in consumption. Someone staying aware of what they consume, how its produced, and most importantly, how its production affects our planet, could be the greenest of them all.