All this pavement has direct environmental consequences. One is simply the cost of producing it all: the production of cement is responsible for almost 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, and lots and garages are part of that total, as is all the infrastructure required to serve the sprawl. A second is the loss of natural land to suburban development. America lost 460,000 acres of wetlands, for example, every year in the 1950s and ’60s, and 290,000 acres a year in the ’70s and ’80s. This transition is associated with steep declines in animal density, especially of birds and bugs.
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