Transportation
4× less
3.7 t in Manhattan vs 13.6 t U.S. — cars plus personal flights.
Home energy use
3× less
EIA RECS 2020: a detached house is 2,264 sq ft; a 5+ unit apartment is 904. About a third the energy. Heat and AC are 52% of U.S. home energy.
Land use
30× less
Census: 370 sq ft of land per person in Manhattan vs 11,000 in the average U.S. urban area. Keep nature nature, the county county, and farms farms.
Moving close to downtown in your city — whether Manhattan or a small town with its own Main Street that you live and work in, not a suburb — is the most impactful environmental decision most Americans can make.
Why transportation and housing are the biggest
Typical U.S. household, one year
43 t
of carbon, 2019
U.S. average from the 2019 household inventory (BLS spending, EPA emissions factors). Travel is the largest slice. Housing is second. Heat and air conditioning are more than half of U.S. home energy, so the housing slice is mostly the furnace. Together, transportation and housing are 22 tons — just over half the year. Food is close behind housing. It barely moves when you change cities. Neither do services — they are mostly health care.
- Private travel 13.6 t · 32%
- Housing 8.4 t · 20%
- Food 8.2 t · 19%
- Services (mostly health care) 7.8 t · 18%
- Goods (spend) 4.9 t · 11%
What other individual environmental decisions come close?
A few other things an individual can do also move real tons. They are smaller than moving downtown and the car — unless you fly constantly, or you count having a child.
7 t is the gasoline share of the 13.6 t U.S. vs 3.7 t Manhattan travel gap — about 74% of U.S. household travel is gasoline (Appendix 2). Diet, the flight, and the child are Wynes & Nicholas, 2017 — 0.8 t per person (~2 t household), 1.6 t for one transatlantic round trip, 59 t for one fewer child. EPA: cars, not planes, are most U.S. travel emissions.
How the United States and Manhattan compare with the world
One household year, 2.5 people — the same household as the 43 t U.S. year. The typical American household is about 3½ times the world average and about 7 times a 1.5°C year. Manhattan is still about 4½ times that year. Tokyo sits near the world average, and still about 1½ times sustainable.
43 t and 27 t: NYC CBEI 2019 households. World 12 t, Tokyo 10 t, and 1.5°C 6 t are per-person figures × 2.5 — 4.7 t world, 4 t Tokyo, 2.5 t IGES.
What Tokyo does that Manhattan doesn’t
It is not the car. Manhattan already dropped the driveway. Tokyo lives in less space, eats less beef, and takes the train between cities. The rest of the 13 t vs 4 t per person is less stuff — and two inventories that are not identical. Manhattan already cut the floor versus America. The goods slice did not fall with it: 4.9 t U.S. vs 4.2 t Manhattan.
Smaller homes
690 sf
Tokyo ~690 sq ft vs New York City ~1,130. Census and EIA do not publish a Manhattan square-foot average. A U.S. 5+ apartment is 904; a detached house is 2,264. New York City is already half the American house. Tokyo is 40% smaller than that.
Less beef
9 kg
FAO / Our World in Data: Japan 9 kg of beef per person vs 36 kg in the United States. Also less dairy. Manhattan’s food slice barely moved when the car disappeared.
The train, not the plane
4.2 kg
JR Central: Tokyo–Osaka Shinkansen 4.2 kg CO₂ per seat vs 50 kg on a plane. About 1/12. Japan’s domestic flying is 80 kg per person a year vs 383 kg in the United States.
What if I prefer a rural life?
A farm that feeds itself and doesn’t commute is another low-carbon life. That sits near the world average. Rural America is not that farm. It is about 20 t per person — higher than the city core — because of the truck and the house. Downtown is what lets the county stay county and the farms stay farms.