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Comparing Portland to New York City's "gleaming ecotopia" is statistical flimflam. How many of the Rotting Apple's residents ever experience a life beyond its pale of concrete and asphalt? Do "people" or "quality of life" have a "place" in your analysis? — Confederated Tribes of the Cascadia Subduction Zone
Don't bogart the scare quotes, Confederated, I might need them if I get sarcastic on Reddit later. Several readers pushed back against my hot-take-y assertion that NYC is actually greener than Portland (Dr. Know, WW, Oct. 9, 2019).
Look, no one is saying New York is a verdant paradise of painstakingly restored wetlands and LEED Platinum-certified buildings. It's polluted, ecologically barren, and not a particularly healthy place to live.
But what's healthy for you and what's healthy for the planet are two different things, and quality of life doesn't enter into it. To stop global warming, you can either reduce the number of people, or reduce the amount of carbon each person produces.
It's in the latter category that dense cities excel. (Depending on which neighborhood you're in, they can do OK in the former as well.) For example, the 4 million residents of Los Angeles—shitty, smoggy L.A.—put out 20 percent less carbon (total, not per capita) than the 600,000 inhabitants of rugged, unspoiled Wyoming.
Living in the woods and eating organic produce may make you feel as if you're living in harmony with nature, but from the planet's point of view, you're just one of 7 billion carbon-spewing liabilities who would do the planet a much bigger favor by simply dropping dead. If you heat your log cabin—with anything, even wood—or travel by any means other than horseback, the typical, pizza-munching city dweller has you beat on the carbon front simply through economies of scale.
New York City pumps out more carbon emissions per square mile than any other city, but in doing so it takes a staggering 8.25 million of those human liabilities off the carbon table at a rate of just 6.1 tons of CO2 spewed per year. (Those clean-living folks in Wyoming pump out 104 tons each.)
The truth is that any place where people live is already ruined; density at least confines the damage. If you really love nature, stay the hell out of it.