What or where are we driving in Kingston, Ontario?

A recent analytical paper from Statistics Canada claims that Kingston, Ontario has the highest per capita private vehicle greenhouse gas emissions of all census metropolitan areas in Canada

Kingston, the city farthest to the right, sticks out quite a bit! (you'll have to click on the link to get a clean looking graph).

This prompted an article in the local newspaper, the Kingston Whig-Standard
entitled "Unsustainable" which focused on the environmental sustainability and climate change implications of this study.

But these days it pays to remind people of the dollar cost of our use of motor fuel, hence my letter to the editor as follows:

Kudos to the Whig Standard for reporting on last week's Analytical
Paper from Statistics Canada showing Kingston's per capita greenhouse
gas emissions from private vehicles to be the highest amongst all
census metropolitan areas in Canada ("Unsustainable", May 15). I wish
to point out that this fact is important for Kingston's economy too.
All those extra greenhouse gas emissions imply tens of millions of
dollars extra spent on motor fuel each year.

First of all, could the numbers from StatsCan report be wrong? After
all, it is strange that Kingston and, to a lesser extent, Sudbury,
have substantially more per capita emissions than all other
metropolitan areas. Kingston's private vehicle emissions were 3035 kg
per year per person , Sudbury's were 2844 kg, and in third, far
behind, was Barrie at 2221 kg, with the median for all cities being
about 1800 kg (Thunder Bay and Moncton were near the median).
Kingston's total private vehicle emissions figure of 462,000 tonnes/yr
roughly agrees with the result of a study that I did a couple of years
ago on Kingston's greenhouse gas footprint. That study, "Trends in Kingston's Community Greenhouse Gas Emissions (2000-2006)" which is available online at the City of Kingston website, used a completely
different methodology for calculating the emissions from vehicles
(StatsCan used the Canadian Vehicle Survey. I used data on how much
gasoline was purchased in the City of Kingston), but arrived at
roughly the same answer. So it's hard to believe that StatsCan made
some sort of mistake.

Now to the economic implications. The 460,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas
emissions from private vehicles comes from burning motor fuel - about
190 million litres of it every year. If Kingston's per capita vehicle
emissions went down to the median level for all cities, our motor fuel
use would decrease to about 110 million litres. With gas at about 90
cents a litre, that's $70 million dollars every year that we could be
spending on something else or just saving up for the future. One could
also think of it as 1400 jobs at a salary of $50,000 going out our
vehicle tailpipes every year.

Let's find out why Kingston's vehicle emissions are so high. Is it our
vehicle mix? Our public transportation system? Our city's layout? Are
we getting any benefits from this extra consumption of gasoline? If we
are not getting $70 million of benefits every year, what should be
done about it? Is this something that can be affected by our municipal
government's policies? If so, should it be an issue in this year's
municipal elections?

It is my sincere hope that this Analytical Report is, as the opening
line of the Whig story suggests, a shot of inspiration to Kingston in
its quest to really become Canada's most sustainable city -
environmentally and economically.