Ever since Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” brought climate change to the mainstream, the infatuation of the media with the topic has been a mixed blessing in my opinion. On the positive side, the continuous coverage of climate change and other things environmental has ushered in an era of eco-awareness that we would have thought impossible just a few short years ago. On the negative side, the media is frequently guilty of reporting high-impact sound bites that barely scratch the surface of the story and almost never explain the actual science.

Recently I was reading an interesting article in the local paper about green initiatives in new home construction. They provided a statistic about the per capita annual carbon footprints of the residents of major cities. Although they provided no source for the information, it was reported that Denver leads North American cities (25 tons per capita) while the footprint of Toronto’s residents is 9.3 tons. Many people who read this might get the impression that the residents of Denver are consumption-crazy eco-terrorists that burn oil like there’s no tomorrow.

What the newspaper didn’t report is that Denver’s carbon footprint is so high because its electricity is almost entirely derived from fossil fuels. Meanwhile, Toronto resident’s receive almost three-quarters of their electricity from hydro-electric and nuclear sources, neither of which contribute to their carbon footprint. A telling statistic is that the average amount of electricity consumed per household is almost double in Toronto than it is in Denver. So much for the implication in the newspaper that Denver residents are consumption crazy.

Photographs courtesy of National Geographic Travel and Denver Cityscape.