Kermit Was Right: It's Not Easy Being Green

The Green Guide has posted it's list of top ten Green Cities. Guess who's #1.

Go on... guess!






It's Eugene, OR. But guess who's #2!

Well... it's Austin, TX.

But guess who's really high on the list...

OK, it's not Pittsburgh.

Actually, we don't really make the list:

1. Eugene, OR
2. Austin, TX
3. Portland, OR
4. St. Paul, MN
5. Santa Rosa, CA
6. Oakland, CA
7. Berkeley, CA
8. Honolulu, HI
9. Huntsville, AL
10. Denver, CO
11. Boston, MA
12. Lexington, KY
13. Springfield, IL
14. Irvine, CA
15. Cambridge, MA
16. Anchorage, AK
17. Syracuse, NY
18. San Francisco, CA
19. Minneapolis, MN
20. Milwaukee, WI
21. Rochester, NY
22. Albuquerque, NM
23. Ann Arbor, MI
24. Seattle, WA
25. Kansas City, MO

Yes folks, we were beaten out by Albuquerque.

So the criteria was based on the following: Air Quality, Electricity Use and Production, Environmental Perspective, Environmental Policy, Green Design, Green Space, Public Health, Recycling, Socioeconomic Factors, Transportation, and Water Quality. If you wanted to pick a set of criteria that would be more weighed against Pittsburgh, I don't think you could pick a better one.

My guess is that we score pretty well on Green Design, Green Space, and Recycling, and do bad to worse on everything else. Lord knows we probably get F minuses on water and air quality, and I'm sure that, in the face of all of our other problems, Environmental Policy is not the City's #1 priority. This is a shame, as Environmental development would be a great opportunity for the City of Pittsburgh to make its niche, if only a way could be found to do it.

Anyway, I hope that we at least got a "Participant Certificate" or an "Everybody-Gets-An-Award Award."