Edward L. Glaeser is an economics professor at Harvard.
In Dr. Seuss’ environmentalist fable, “The Lorax,” the Once-ler, a budding textile magnate, chops down Truffula to knit “Thneeds.”
Over the protests of the environmentally sensitive Lorax, the Once-ler builds a great industrial town that despoils the environment, because he “had to grow bigger.” Eventually, the Once-ler overdoes it, and he chops down the last Truffula tree, destroying the source of his income. Chastened, Dr. Seuss’s industrialist turns green, urging a young listener to take the last Truffula seed and plant a new forest.
Some of the lessons told by this story are correct. From a purely profit-maximizing point of view, the Once-ler is pretty inept, because he kills his golden goose. Any good management consultant would have told him to manage his growth more wisely. One aspect of the story’s environmentalist message, that bad things happen when we overfish a common pool, is also correct.
But the unfortunate aspect of the story is that urbanization comes off terribly. The forests are good; the factories are bad. Not only does the story disparage the remarkable benefits that came from the mass production of clothing in 19th-century textile towns, it sends exactly the wrong message on the environment. Contrary to the story’s implied message, living in cities is green, while living surrounded by forests is brown.
By building taller and taller buildings, the Once-ler was proving himself to be the real environmentalist.
Matthew Kahn, a U.C.L.A. environmental economist, and I looked across America’s metropolitan areas and calculated the carbon emissions associated with a new home in different parts of the country. We estimated expected energy use from driving and public transportation, for a family of fixed size and income. We added in carbon emissions from home electricity and home heating. We didn’t try to take on the far thornier issues related to commercial or industrial energy use.
This exercise wasn’t meant to be some sort of environmental beauty contest, but an estimate of the environmental costs and benefits associated with living in different parts of the country. In a recent City Journal article, I gave a brief (and somewhat polemical) synopsis of the results.
In almost every metropolitan area, we found the central city residents emitted less carbon than the suburban counterparts. Read more…