Humans have been urbanizing in earnest since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. Worldwide, 55% of humans live in urban areas, and the ratio is much higher in the Americas. This trend is only accelerating, with automation of agriculture and resource extraction reducing rural labor needs, while the information and service economies of cities continue to increase labor needs.
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| Degree of urbanization (percentage of urban population in total population) by continent in 2018 Statista |
As an example, the Appalachias of 1910 had close to 800,000 people employed in the coal industry, and that number is around 60,000 today. By comparison, New York City had under 5 million residents in 1910 vs 8.6 million today.
Global warming caused by humans since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution has a correlation with urbanization. Automation allowed and required the work force to leave rural areas and congregate in much more efficient cities which produced much more value. Urbanization is one of the factors which allowed more humans to survive and hence the population to grow. Cities were integral to the success of the Industrial Revolution, and without them humanity wouldn’t have changed the climate as much. But there are dozens of other factors, so it can’t be stated that cities are the cause of global warming, just a factor in the system which led to global warming.
Read the Medium story by Michael Blanchard - “Cities don’t cause global warming but must adapt to it.”
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