Since moving to Houston from El Paso about six or seven years ago I swear a month hasn’t went by without me spending a few days with some moderate to severe congestion. It’s so bad that I like to say I’m allergic to Houston.
So it’s with great displeasure that I announce that Houston, Texas has taken first place for releasing 18.625 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere barely beating out Los Angeles (another place I’m allergic to) which took 2nd place with 18.595 million tons.
As you may be aware both of these cities are obsessed with pubic “morality” in that they’ve declared war on smokers and other domestic sources of air pollutants (aka: things that we can pretend are worse than the actually worse things the government is involved in).
Both earned their medals by allowing their moneymakers to run wild with Los Angeles paving the entire area and Houston saying “what industrial pollution?!?” while really cranking up the “leave no ground unpaved” industry.
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This is an opportunity for Houston to be the ones leading the charge for reducing CO2 emissions. Corporations don’t get on board until “Going Green” becomes profitable. $4/Gal or more for gasoline starts putting that on people’s minds.
As a result, some large companies (mine included) are now pushing green initiatives. A lot of chargeable time is lost in transit if you’re sitting in traffic. Strangely enough, the way Houston is laid out by having multiple urban centers could actually cut down on traffic and commute times.
Houston has 5 areas (Downtown, Greenway Plaza, Uptown, Westchase and Greenspoint) that any other city would be happy to call their downtown. This could ultimately work in our favor if people would only choose to live closer to their workplace. High gas prices could be the trigger to get people to move closer to their jobs and start reducing Houston’s collective carbon footprint.
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