It turns out if you live in South Tampa or Wesley Chapel, your household is probably pretty awful for the environment, according to a new report.

This morning, the New York Times published an interactive piece titled “The Climate Impact of Your Neighborhood, Mapped.” Using data from EcoDataLab and the University of California, Berkley the publication rated neighborhoods around the globe based on the area’s average carbon emissions.

The full methodology can found here, but essentially the interactive map shows the estimated emissions of each neighborhood, scoring the cluster of households with varying degrees of green or orange.

According to the map, the national average is about 40 tons of CO2 per household, so homes that consume the most electricity, buy the most goods, and drive the furthest, for example, scored the worst and appear in a dark orange color. However, households that produce the least amount of carbon emissions appear dark green.

“If you take more flights, drive more miles or buy more goods than your neighbors, you may have a higher emissions footprint than your area’s average,” writes the NYT. “Conversely, if you put solar panels on your roof or drive an electric car, that can lower your emissions.”

As you can see from the map, most of South of Tampa has one of the highest carbon footprints in all of Tampa Bay, producing close to 60 tons of annual CO2 per household.

Considering the sheer size of homes and overall wealth in areas like Beach Park and Sunset Beach, for example, it certainly makes sense that these neighborhoods scored above average in nearly all categories.

But Tampa’s Bay’s suburbs are also well represented on this map. Parts of Wesley Chapel scored close to 60 tons of CO2 per household, as did areas near Fish Hawk, Shore Acres and pretty much everything north of Race Track Road.

On the flip side, Tampa Bay’s more densely populated neighborhoods scored very well. Area’s like Seminole Heights, Tampa Heights, Ybor City, West Tampa, downtown St. Petersburg, South Pasadena, and around University of South Florida all scored closer to 20-30 tons of CO2 per household.

Of course, it’s important to note that Tampa Bay is a poorly designed, car-centric metro with a near non-existent public transportation system, and roughly half the homes are powered by a coal-burning power plant.

In other words, a lot of these carbon emissions aren’t by choice.

But Dr. Chris Jones, director of the CoolClimate Network at the University of California, Berkeley, told the publication he hopes this data will help individuals make small adjustments and also inspire cities and local governments to consider better climate-friendly policies for developers.

“When individuals or households want to know what influence they have over emissions, a consumption-based carbon footprint is the most relevant indicator,” said Jones. “And it can help us see what sorts of larger systemic changes are necessary.”

Read the full piece here.

This article appears in Dec 8-14, 2022.