About three-quarters of fossil-fuel CO₂ pollution comes from cities. At least 48 U.S. cities are under-counting their carbon dioxide pollution by nearly 20%, according to a new study that compares local disclosures against a national database that can now estimate the same information. The new analysis could create confusion about how much cities emit—and therefore how much pollution they must cut—at a time of increased attention to climate change from the White House, state capitals, and city officials. About three-quarters of fossil-fuel CO₂ pollution comes from cities. As populations swell, reducing those emissions becomes even more critical, said Northern Arizona University professor Kevin Gurney and his co-authors in the journal Nature Communications . The difference between the cities’ and the study authors’ estimates is consequential at a national scale—amounting to 70 million tons of CO₂, or about the output of the entire state of Massachusetts. If the difference between […]