Country dwellers have bigger carbon footprints than city dwellers?

“When you look at the lifestyle of people living in cities, they can often be better in terms of carbon emissions than people in the country,” said David Dodman, a geographer and climate change scientist who headed the IIED research effort. “In certain cities, particularly in high-income countries but also in rapidly industrializing countries, the emissions from city dwellers were less than the average emissions form the country as a whole.”

The IIED report, which was published in 2009, spawned 20 or 30 follow-up studies, all of which told a similarly positive story about urbanization. “[All of the] studies have shown that urbanization can have benefits in terms of lowering greenhouse gas emissions,” Dodman told Life’s Little Mysteries.