Twelve Missouri communities have conducted GHG inventories. This is the third in a series of posts summarizing and analyzing them.

The graph at right shows GHG emissions per square mile of land area for the 12 Missouri communities. Each column represents a community, and the colors within the columns represent community sectors. These findings vary widely across jurisdictions, perhaps suggesting that GHG emissions are only slightly a function of the geographic size of a jurisdiction.

Emissions per square mile for Wildwood and for the State of Missouri were very small compared to the other jurisdictions, an intuitive finding given that they contain large areas of farmland and forest, while most of the smaller jurisdictions were developed urban and suburban locations.

There is no doubt that big places have lots of GHG emissions. But it is not because of the land area, it is because they also tend to contain lots of people and lots of economic activity.

This analysis is unrevealing.