Ask how green is Tacoma and you’re likely to get a bunch of different answers. One of them is, “Why should I care?”

I have a lot of sympathy for that response. After all, we are beset by people asking us to care about things — products, politics, and a million different causes. It’s hard not to get a little desensitized.

So what’s the big deal about being green? 

Since this is the Weekly Volcano, let me put it in volcanic terms. Humans pump 27 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually. That’s approximately 130 times more CO2 than all of the world’s volcanoes put out in a year. Humanity today is like the Earth suddenly going from 1,500 active volcanoes to 195,000 in about a century. We’re doing something to this planet.

Do we know exactly what it’s doing yet? No, not exactly. But we have a really good idea. And since we’re talking about our one and only home, reducing the size of the Human Volcano is a really good idea.

To actually do it, though, is going to take some work. More than 1,000 cities — including Tacoma — have joined together to cut emissions and build more sustainably. But to know where we want to go, we need to know where we are.

This brings us back to the question: How green is Tacoma?

Answer: so-so. We’re not the worst, and we’re not the best.

Let’s start with the good side. By the numbers, Tacoma holds up pretty well. According to estimates for 2005, the average Tacoman adds 9.5 tons of CO2 to the atmosphere every year, thanks to our cars, our homes, the businesses we frequent, and the products we buy.

Compare that to the Washington state average of 13.3 tons of CO2 per capita and you might think, “Hey, that’s no so bad.” Compare it to the U.S. average of 23.7 tons of CO2 per capita and you might be tempted to think, “Hey, we’re doing great! I’m going to let my car run in the driveway all night so that it’s warm when I wake up.”

Why does Tacoma look so good? One reason: hydroelectric power.

The United States gets 72 percent of its power from coal and natural gas whereas Tacoma gets only about 1 percent of its power from nonrenewable energy sources. Ninety percent of our energy comes from four hydro projects Tacoma Public Utilities has on local rivers. Our remaining power comes from nuclear (about 8 percent) with a pinch of wind and “biomass” power (the remaining 1 percent).

Is hydro “green”? When I mentioned hydroelectric power to Tacoma eco-celeb SolaRichard, known for his bigger than life hats and tireless work to further the use of solar energy, he got mad. He called hydro a “green-washing” of our energy problem. By “green-washing” he meant whitewashing a problem by slapping the green label on it.

And he’s right. We can’t ignore that the dams hurt river ecosystems. They scour riverbeds and disrupt aquatic life above and below the dams.

In addition to those problems, we also can’t forget that they may not continue to give us the power we need. According to the Climate Impacts Group at the University of Washington, the Cascades glaciers have lost a third of their area since 1950 while snowpack is down 35 percent. The glaciers and snow feed the rivers, many of which have seen an equivalent drop in flow. Run out of water, run out of power.

Even with those big caveats, when it comes to greenhouse gas emissions, hydro is our friend — for now. Yes, we need to do what we can to mitigate damage on the ecosystem. And yes, we certainly need a Plan B if the Nisqually Glacier melts away. And we most certainly should not build any more dams.

But we can thank hydro power for making Tacoma greener than the national average.

Here’s the rub. With 99 percent of our power coming from renewable sources, the reason Tacoma isn’t a paragon of greenness should be obvious: We drive too much. Transportation accounts for more than half of Tacoma’s CO2 emissions.

It’s tempting to think that our transportation problem is a result of our role as a bedroom community for Seattle and to blame the commuters who drive up and down Interstate 5 all day.

But consider this: In 2004, an estimated 6,000 workers left Pierce County for downtown Seattle every day. Half drove alone, and nearly a third took the bus or train. On the other hand, the same report estimated that 27,400 people commuted into downtown Tacoma from elsewhere in Pierce County. Of those, only 4 percent took the bus, and a whopping 81 percent drove alone. That’s 22,000 cars heading in and out of downtown Tacoma each day carrying a single person.

Tacoma, we have a problem.

I don’t want to single out individual drivers. This is a systemic problem. For many, there are no bus stops anywhere near their homes. Or if there are, perhaps the buses don’t go where they work. Taking the bus might more than double the commute length for many people.

If we want transit to work, we need to seriously invest in buses and streetcars that extend from downtown into suburban Tacoma and Pierce County — as well as throughout the suburbs and neighborhoods.

The benefits could be big. If we could get our regional numbers to look like the Tacoma-to-Seattle commute, we’d pull 8,500 cars off local roads every day, and our buses would have eight times the ridership. And that just counts the trips in and out of downtown Tacoma!

It’s about more than just building streetcars and adding buses, though. People need to be closer to the routes because right now Tacoma is just too spread out.

How spread out are we? Let’s do some math. Tacoma’s population is estimated at 202,700, and our city is just over 32,000 acres. Divide one by the other and we have about six people per acre. Put another way, if we spread every Tacoman — every man, woman, and child — equally over the city, each of us would have about 6,900 square feet of land all to ourselves. That’s not good. We need to get a lot more people living in population centers with easy transit options between them.

The key to all of this is to remember that going green not only cuts our CO2 emissions, but it’s also going to save us money — individual citizens and our government.

Ryan Mello, Pierce County conservation director for the Cascade Land Conservancy and a Metro Parks commissioner, told me, “Greenness is tied to everything else, including growing our economy.”

Mello was one of the leaders of the Green Ribbon Task Force for the city of Tacoma. The group made recommendations to the city of Tacoma that were adopted by the City Council earlier this year.

“There’s a lot of opportunity for positive growth and change,” Mello said. “Leaders are making energy efficient buildings a priority, and they are taking the Green Ribbon recommendations seriously.”

The long-range goal for Tacoma — and other cities in the Local Governments for Sustainability partnership — is striking: by 2050, Tacoma wants to cut its emissions to 80 percent of its 1990 levels.

“It sets the tone for our pace and our urgency. The next decade is going to be the most critical,” said Mello.

It certainly does set the tone. To make it, each Tacoman will have to cut about seven tons of CO2 off the 9.5 tons we each currently use. (Probably more really, because Tacoma will be adding a lot more people in the next 42 years.)

Yikes!

So how can we get from here to there?

We can cut transportation emissions with mass transit options and renew our fleet of cars with hybrids or full-on electric vehicles, which I’m assuming will be prevalent by 2050. That would take care of three to four tons of CO2 per person.

We can create more energy efficient residences. This means building more densely in our neighborhood centers and in downtown. It also means retrofitting single-family homes with solar panels and more energy efficient design. (Thanks to his solar tree, SolaRichard’s meter runs backward; he receives a check every month from Tacoma Public Utilities for what he puts into the system.) This would take care of one to two tons of CO2 per person.

The rest is trickier. It involves commerce and industry changing business and manufacturing practices to use less energy. This can be affected through regulation, such as taxing plastic bag use in grocery stores à la Seattle and Ireland to name a couple of places that have done this. And it can be affected through market forces, such as buying green or local products whenever possible.

We have a long way to go. But we’re getting better. Hopefully, a lot better.

Further reading

Profile of SolaRichard in the New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/27/us/27solar.html?_r=1&ref=us&oref=slogin — Published in 2007 about lighting the Narrows Bridge with solar-powered LED lights.

Local Governments for Sustainability: http://www.iclei.org/— The organization of cities committed to reducing emissions

Profile of William McDonough: http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/features/2008/05/mcdonough200805 — How green building can be eco-friendly and restore the economy

"Hot Flat and Crowded" by Thomas Friedman: http://www.amazon.com/Hot-Flat-Crowded-Revolution-America/dp/0374166854 — The best book for understanding energy use, the energy grid, and what public utilities can do to go green.