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This is a bizarre response: even in larger US cities, Americans produce more emissions (and waste) per capita than their European counterparts. Density plays a

This is a bizarre response: even in larger US cities, Americans produce more emissions (and waste) per capita than their European counterparts. Density plays a large role, but consumer behaviors play a larger one. And American consumes prefer diets with more meat, cars that burn fuel less efficiently, and products that are designed to be disposed more frequently. Edit: we also prefer larger houses, built more cheaply.

lazide 4y ago
And why do those consumers prefer that diet? Could it be because of a history of large amounts of open plains with cheap, accessible water and grass, and easy transportation of that meat (rails)? It's quite nutritious too (in a combination with other foods). In Europe, farmland is at an extreme premium in most places given the higher population density and often unfriendly climate and geography. Even more obvious a comparison is India, where veganism is obligatory for a large part of the population because the population density vs farmland would otherwise cause large portions of the population to starve. Could they be using those cars because there is generally more space in US cities (with a few exceptions that have been around longer, like NYC, Boston, Baltimore, etc.) so there is less need to restrict them in size, AND most of the United States has incredibly low population density, AND a lot of nice places to visit, so folks are more likely to go sizable distances - for friends, family, vacations, etc? And since the US has been developing rapidly, as compared to already developed, infrastructure is constantly struggling to keep up, so there is a lot of value in a general purpose vehicle that doesn't require existing infrastructure as much. And why are there more cheaply built houses? Because unlike in Europe, there aren't any old houses where most of the economic and population growth is occurring. Unlike Europe, most of the US has still never had European style development, and it shows. There hasn't been time. And due to large shifts in the US economy as it figures out how to adapt, grow, and change (with no existing historical industrial/residential base to contend with either), it has to build it now. And if you constantly have to keep building new housing in places because of growth, and you don't know where people will actually want to stay (because no history), why spend more than you have to do so? You might end up abandoning it in 10 years because someone found somewhere better. The whole 'a hundred years is a long time in America, and 100 miles is a long way in Europe' (or 100km - you pick). I've spent a lot of time in Europe and the US. The socio-economics and historical time to develop are wildly different, and those socio-economics and time are a large part of why you see what you see. In Europe, there are very few places that someone doesn't already have a stake in the ground - and they will use that to force you to pay them to get out of your way, or comply with some expensive standard too. In the US, that is starting to occur, but hasn't happened yet except in the Urban areas. Most of the US is still completely, totally empty. It isn't because American's are somehow more gluttonous or evil. They're using the tools they have to fit the problems they have given the constraints they have. Same as everyone else. The continental (contiguous) United States has a population density of 36 people per sq km. Western Europe has a population density of 181 per sq km. or 5 times the US. India, for instance, is 464 per sq km, or 12 times the US. North America was colonized by European Migrants and started European style development only 3-500 years ago. Most major (and minor) cities in Europe formed thousands of years ago, and anything less than a 100 years old is often 'new'.
- woodruffw 4y ago
  First, I want to clarify: I haven't made a value judgement like "gluttonous" or "evil." We're operating within the same framework, which is constraints (and incentives). That being said, I think it's overly reductive to chalk it up to the country's size and density. If you take any mid-sized city in the US and wind the clock back by 80 years, you'll see a very different urban structure: dense radial development built around streetcars, multi-family housing next to retail construction, inter-urban and long-distance rail to the next city, etc. Much of the US, including the extremely sparse parts, looked a great deal like Europe. But where Europe's cities and exurbs were rebuilt to more or less the same character after each war or disaster, the US intentionally razed its cities in favor of (subsidized) personal car travel, commercial zoning, low-density housing, etc. Cleveland had an urban population of nearly 1 million in the late 1920s, and was one of the largest cities in the country. It's about a third of that today. That didn't take hundreds of years; just a handful of decades. In other words: we (the US) have intentionally pursued policies and incentive structures that encourage low-density (and correspondingly high-consumption) living, as a departure from our historical arc of development. We don't get to play that off on physical geography; it was a political pivot we made. Edit: And we don't get to play it off on colonization either: New Zealand is both less dense and younger than the US (and more remote, to boot), and yet their emissions are well under half of ours.
  - lazide 4y ago
    Europe wise, probably because cars weren’t mass produced until 1910, and weren’t well developed until post WW1 - let alone comfortable, reliable, etc. WW2 changed that. However in Europe, the industrial base was bombed out, and most of the economy was directing it’s energy towards rebuilding - and even then the density in Europe and existing buildings and housing stock (even with things bombed to smithereens) didn’t support the type of wide open projects and free space the US enjoyed then and often now. The population in Western Europe in 1950 was 142 million. The population today is approx. 191 million, or about 35% growth, even after that terrible war. Europe couldn’t do what the US did because it was already too dense, and at the time, too poor. The United States population in 1950 was 151 million. The population is now 332 million. In 1950, not only did the US have a fully intact industrial base and economy, it had essentially the only one left in the world. So it could and did pursue aggressive expansion and growth, and adopt new technologies which supported it and worked well at the time. Even with more than a doubling in population in that time, it still mostly works - if we ignore wider environmental impacts, of course. And still outside of the few areas with dense inner cities, it really makes no sense to try to use public transit - there is no public! As far as NZ goes, I don’t know enough about them to comment one way or another.
ecshafer 4y ago
When you say larger US cities are you actually comparing apples to oranges? Comparing Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, or Chicago to Paris, Marseille or Lyon makes sense. But Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, etc are large "cities" but are basically not cities, they are a collection of sprawling suburbs that never end.

lazide 4y ago

And why do those consumers prefer that diet? Could it be because of a history of large amounts of open plains with cheap, accessible water and grass, and easy transportation of that meat (rails)? It's quite nutritious too (in a combination with other foods). In Europe, farmland is at an extreme premium in most places given the higher population density and often unfriendly climate and geography. Even more obvious a comparison is India, where veganism is obligatory for a large part of the population because the population density vs farmland would otherwise cause large portions of the population to starve. Could they be using those cars because there is generally more space in US cities (with a few exceptions that have been around longer, like NYC, Boston, Baltimore, etc.) so there is less need to restrict them in size, AND most of the United States has incredibly low population density, AND a lot of nice places to visit, so folks are more likely to go sizable distances - for friends, family, vacations, etc? And since the US has been developing rapidly, as compared to already developed, infrastructure is constantly struggling to keep up, so there is a lot of value in a general purpose vehicle that doesn't require existing infrastructure as much. And why are there more cheaply built houses? Because unlike in Europe, there aren't any old houses where most of the economic and population growth is occurring. Unlike Europe, most of the US has still never had European style development, and it shows. There hasn't been time. And due to large shifts in the US economy as it figures out how to adapt, grow, and change (with no existing historical industrial/residential base to contend with either), it has to build it now. And if you constantly have to keep building new housing in places because of growth, and you don't know where people will actually want to stay (because no history), why spend more than you have to do so? You might end up abandoning it in 10 years because someone found somewhere better. The whole 'a hundred years is a long time in America, and 100 miles is a long way in Europe' (or 100km - you pick). I've spent a lot of time in Europe and the US. The socio-economics and historical time to develop are wildly different, and those socio-economics and time are a large part of why you see what you see. In Europe, there are very few places that someone doesn't already have a stake in the ground - and they will use that to force you to pay them to get out of your way, or comply with some expensive standard too. In the US, that is starting to occur, but hasn't happened yet except in the Urban areas. Most of the US is still completely, totally empty. It isn't because American's are somehow more gluttonous or evil. They're using the tools they have to fit the problems they have given the constraints they have. Same as everyone else. The continental (contiguous) United States has a population density of 36 people per sq km. Western Europe has a population density of 181 per sq km. or 5 times the US. India, for instance, is 464 per sq km, or 12 times the US. North America was colonized by European Migrants and started European style development only 3-500 years ago. Most major (and minor) cities in Europe formed thousands of years ago, and anything less than a 100 years old is often 'new'.

woodruffw 4y ago
First, I want to clarify: I haven't made a value judgement like "gluttonous" or "evil." We're operating within the same framework, which is constraints (and incentives). That being said, I think it's overly reductive to chalk it up to the country's size and density. If you take any mid-sized city in the US and wind the clock back by 80 years, you'll see a very different urban structure: dense radial development built around streetcars, multi-family housing next to retail construction, inter-urban and long-distance rail to the next city, etc. Much of the US, including the extremely sparse parts, looked a great deal like Europe. But where Europe's cities and exurbs were rebuilt to more or less the same character after each war or disaster, the US intentionally razed its cities in favor of (subsidized) personal car travel, commercial zoning, low-density housing, etc. Cleveland had an urban population of nearly 1 million in the late 1920s, and was one of the largest cities in the country. It's about a third of that today. That didn't take hundreds of years; just a handful of decades. In other words: we (the US) have intentionally pursued policies and incentive structures that encourage low-density (and correspondingly high-consumption) living, as a departure from our historical arc of development. We don't get to play that off on physical geography; it was a political pivot we made. Edit: And we don't get to play it off on colonization either: New Zealand is both less dense and younger than the US (and more remote, to boot), and yet their emissions are well under half of ours.
- lazide 4y ago
  Europe wise, probably because cars weren’t mass produced until 1910, and weren’t well developed until post WW1 - let alone comfortable, reliable, etc. WW2 changed that. However in Europe, the industrial base was bombed out, and most of the economy was directing it’s energy towards rebuilding - and even then the density in Europe and existing buildings and housing stock (even with things bombed to smithereens) didn’t support the type of wide open projects and free space the US enjoyed then and often now. The population in Western Europe in 1950 was 142 million. The population today is approx. 191 million, or about 35% growth, even after that terrible war. Europe couldn’t do what the US did because it was already too dense, and at the time, too poor. The United States population in 1950 was 151 million. The population is now 332 million. In 1950, not only did the US have a fully intact industrial base and economy, it had essentially the only one left in the world. So it could and did pursue aggressive expansion and growth, and adopt new technologies which supported it and worked well at the time. Even with more than a doubling in population in that time, it still mostly works - if we ignore wider environmental impacts, of course. And still outside of the few areas with dense inner cities, it really makes no sense to try to use public transit - there is no public! As far as NZ goes, I don’t know enough about them to comment one way or another.

ecshafer 4y ago

When you say larger US cities are you actually comparing apples to oranges? Comparing Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, or Chicago to Paris, Marseille or Lyon makes sense. But Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix, Miami, etc are large "cities" but are basically not cities, they are a collection of sprawling suburbs that never end.