City residents produce less carbon than country folk

Washington (AP) Cities may be hot spots for Global Warming, but a new report says people living there are greener than folks out in the boondocks.

Researchers at the Brookings Institution say each resident of the 100 largest metropolitan areas is responsible on average for 2.47 tons of carbon dioxide in energy consumption each year.

That's 14 percent below the 2.87 ton U.S. average.

Those cities still produce 56 percent of the nation's carbon dioxide pollution. But their greater use of mass transit and population density reduce the per-person average.

Metropolitan area emissions of carbon dioxide are highest in the east, where people use a lot of coal for electricity. They're lower in the West, where the weather is better and electricity and motor fuel cost more.

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