A Solution for Climate Pollution?

AuthorSmith, Patricia
PositionINTERNATIONAL

Copenhagen is trying to remove as much carbon from the atmosphere as it emits. The city's plan may offer a road map for fighting climate change.

Copenhagen used to be an industrial city. There were factories in the narrow streets and ships in the oil-stained harbor. Electricity came from smoke-emitting coal-fired power plants, and the air was smoggy.

Today, Denmark's capital has been transformed into a much more environmentally friendly place. Offshore wind turbines generate much of the city's electricity. Bicycle paths are three lanes wide on busy streets to accommodate the 43 percent of Copenhageners who regularly commute to work or school by bike. A new train line opening this year will put most residents within half a mile of a train station, reducing the need to drive.

To cut down on garbage, all apartment buildings now have eight different recycling bins so residents can recycle as much as possible. Nonrecyclable garbage goes to a high-tech incinerator, where it's burned to generate heat for buildings.

All these changes are part of Copenhagen's ambitious plan to become carbon neutral: By 2025, the city intends to generate enough clean, renewable energy to offset the carbon it releases into the atmosphere from use of fossil fuels and other polluting energy sources. It aims to create so much renewable energy that it can export some of it and reduce the carbon emissions those other places would have generated. (Denmark is one of 19 countries that recently pledged to become carbon neutral by 2050.)

Here's why Copenhagen's push for carbon neutrality matters to the rest of us: Half the people on Earth live in cities, and the vast share of the planet-warming gases such as carbon dioxide that scientists say cause climate change come from cities--from automobile tailpipes, power plants that supply electricity, and landfills. Cities are both a huge part of the problem and a potential source of solutions.

Slashinq Emissions

The experience of Copenhagen, home to 624,000 people, shows what's possible--and where the challenges lie--for other urban governments hoping to take action against climate change.

Cities "can change the way we behave, the way we are living, and go more green," says Copenhagen's mayor, Frank Jensen. His city has some advantages in its quest to be carbon neutral: It's small; it's relatively wealthy, with a per capita income of more than $70,000 (compared with about $36,000 in New York City); and its people care a lot about...

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