Chart of the day: Sustainability Indicators – All the Ways Germany Is Less Car-Reliant Than the U.S., in 1 Chart
This interesting chart was a part of a CityLab article that analyses how Germany is less car dependent than the United States by looking data from comparable cities in each of these nations. What caught my attention, among the many things, is the difference in the carbon footprint. In the US, Transport sector alone accounts for 32% of our overall CO2 emissions whereas in Germany it is only 19%. If we ever get around to implementing a carbon tax, it could fall precipitously but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, given the current political discourse.
The data come from a recent comparison of German and U.S. planning approaches led by transport scholar Ralph Buehler of Virginia Tech. Drilling down to the city level, Buehler and collaborators find more of the same driving trends in an analysis of two large metros from each country: Washington, D.C., and Stuttgart.
