Land Use Change an Overlooked Cause of Global Warming

Georgia Tech City and Regional Planning Professor Brian Stone is publishing a paper in the December edition of Environmental Science and Technology that suggests policymakers need to address the influence of global deforestation and urbanization on climate change, in addition to greenhouse gas emissions.

Over-crowding suburbs

According to Stone’s paper, as the international community meets in Copenhagen in December to develop a new framework for responding to climate change, policymakers need to give serious consideration to broadening the range of management strategies beyond greenhouse gas reductions alone.

“Across the U.S. as a whole, approximately 50 percent of the warming that has occurred since 1950 is due to land use changes (usually in the form of clearing forest for crops or cities) rather than to the emission of greenhouse gases,” said Stone. “Most large U.S. cities, including Atlanta, are warming at more than twice the rate of the planet as a whole — a rate that is mostly attributable to land use change. As a result, emissions reduction programs — like the cap and trade program under consideration by the U.S. Congress — may not sufficiently slow climate change in large cities where most people live and where land use change is the dominant driver of warming.”

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