People Who Live In Cities Greener Than Hicks In The Sticks

You know how the accepted wisdom is that people who live in cities are environmental murderers, trashing the planet while drinking half caf half decaf chai espressos with low fat milk and extra foam while people who live in the country are closer to nature, living in pastoral paradises, giving back to Mother Earth?

Yeah, turns out that's all wrong.

"Each resident of the largest 100 largest metropolitan areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year, 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average, researchers at the Brookings Institution say in a report being released Thursday.

Those 100 cities still account for 56 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide pollution.

But their greater use of mass transit and population density reduce the per person average. "It was a surprise the extent to which emissions per capita are lower," Marilyn Brown, a professor of energy policy at the Georgia Institute of Technology and co-author of the report, said in an interview."