The World's Worst Polluting Cities

We are all contributing to the global heating of planet Earth. However some of us are more culpable than others. If you are a resident of New York, Seoul or Guangzhou then you are among some of the world's worst polluters. A new study has calculated the carbon footprint of 13,000 cities around the globe and found that most of the worst polluting cities in the world can be found in Asia and the United States.

Carbon Footprints of 13 000 Cities has taken a top-down approach to calculating the carbon footprint of towns and cities. The study used data on urban consumption patterns, national carbon emissions, population size and average incomes to estimate the carbon footprint of each city.

The study has been published at the link above but you might find it easier to explore the results as presented by ResourceWatch. ResourceWatch has created an interactive map which presents a 250 meter gridded model of carbon footprints around the world. On this interactive map each 250 meter square is colored to show the estimated Carbon Footprint of that location.

ResourceWatch has also created a graph of the cities with the worst carbon footprints. Seoul, Guangzhou and New York make up the top three worst polluting cities (in that order). Hong Kong (4th) and Los Angeles (5th) have the next highest global footprints. 7 of the top 10 cities are in Asia, the other 3 are all in the Untied States. Moscow has the highest carbon footprint of all European cities. Moscow is only marginally worse than London, which is the second highest polluting city in Europe.