Editor’s note: This is the final op-ed in a series about cities and sustainability. Read the full series here.
In 1984, urban sociologist Jane Jacobs riffed on Adam Smith in her book “Cities and the Wealth of Nations” to argue that cities, not nations, are the world’s primary economic units and that the prosperity of all nations depends on the health and wealth of their cities.
Jacobs makes two points. First, “productive cities create prosperous mixed economies” in their regions. Second, vibrant and prosperous urban centers “shape stunted, wildly unbalanced — and usually exploited and poor — economies in regions that lack productive cities of their own.”
In a nutshell, she illustrates the complexity of urban-rural dynamics in the United States. Consider the following. Even as global temperatures rise and more populations experience extreme weather and drought, climate change skepticism and climate science denial have increased. The climate itself has become central to the culture war between educated urban elites and small-town and rural America.
It is easy — and not wrong — to blame Donald Trump and right-wing media for pushing climate disinformation and climate conspiracy narratives. However, people’s growing receptiveness to these notions inspires growing despair about our predicament as a planet.
In a recent New York Times Magazine interview, data scientist Hannah Ritchie observes that politicizing the climate has been a self-defeating strategy. Ritchie believes that most climate deniers and climate skeptics in the heartland don’t really want to watch the world burn but that they deeply resent the self-righteousness of urban elites and policymakers.
Some mental health professionals believe that Donald Trump exhibits pathologically narcissistic and sociopathic traits. Historians and political analysts have with validity compared the societal threat Trump poses to that of Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. We also know that a cadre of reactionary counterelites pursuing an authoritarian agenda have aligned with Trump and that his base consists of a politically significant “chaos-seeking” slice of Americans who are disproportionately rural.
But it’s vital to remember that nearly 75 million Americans — many of them living in rural areas or cities in rural states — voted for Trump in 2020. The vast majority of these voters are neither narcissistic nor sociopathic and probably not even in any measure chaos-seeking. They may, in fact, know little of Trump’s violent, vindictive and retributive aims for a second term.
What these voters do know is that inequalities exist between nearly every place that is either a city or not a city. Their anger and their opposition are not so much directed at nature and the climate as it is at the liberal urban elites and intellectuals who contemptuously dismiss them as primitive — epitomized by Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables” remark in 2016. As Ritchie reminds us, this contempt is not helpful, is dehumanizing and almost certainly makes matters worse.
Trump and his most influential and wealthy allies on the right are maleficent individuals who deserve our full-throated condemnation and require unyielding resistance. But the only way to defeat them is to separate them from their base of support. As has been the case that for decades, Democrats have abandoned the nation’s working-class regions. And now they are the seeing the blowback.
Cities are ultimately responsible for a huge portion of the greenhouse emissions that are warming our earth and polluting our air. However, cities are also enormously dense, connected and accessible in comparison with rural regions, and that allows for significant efficiencies in housing and transportation. For this reason, Americans living in urban areas actually have a markedly lower carbon footprint than those who live in rural parts.
Compare rural Wyoming and urban Maryland, which have a comparable carbon footprint. Wyoming has a per-capita population density of only 6 people per square mile. Maryland’s population density is 633 people per square mile. The per-capita carbon footprint of a Wyoming resident is 12 times higher than that of the average Maryland resident.
Metropolitan regions face two specific climate challenges of their own. The average household carbon footprint in the largest and most densely populated urban cores is about half the national average. However, the footprint of counterparts in surrounding suburban rings can be as much as twice the national average. This is because suburbs of major cities tend to be wealthier, with larger homes, more land and more vehicles.
Which brings us to the climate impact of wealthy, educated elites who live in these greater metropolitan regions. In a study published last year, university researchers from Massachusetts and Norway measured the climate impact of wealthy people by including the effects of financial investments in the fossil fuel industries. Researchers found that the climate footprint of those with the most disposable income dwarfs the impact of others.
The highest-earning 0.1% of the population is responsible for 170 times as much carbon pollution as the lowest-earning 10% of the population, and the top 1% is responsible for 35 times as much carbon pollution.
If as Jacobs tells us, cities are the vital economic hubs of the nation and if rural regions are destined always to be dependent and distressed, then civic power and privilege coalesce in cities. The actions of urban elites matter greatly.
Millions of affluent urban Americans say they care deeply about our climate future. But their actions are counterproductive. We see celebrities and other wealthy, “globally conscious” elites make token gestures toward fighting climate change, then fly off in fuel-guzzling private jets.
The failure of these affluent urban elites to act appropriately — to put their power and privilege at risk on behalf of our climate future — places their own children and the rest of the world in jeopardy. The hypocrisy is transparent, and when combined with an air of moral superiority, it is enormously alienating to huge swaths of the nation not privileged to be able to make the choices that the wealthy can.
Peter Schwartz writes at the broad intersection of philosophy, politics, history and religion. He publishes the Wikidworld newsletter on Substack.
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