At the federal level, America is a climate laggard. But cities and states are taking action where higher powers have failed to get off the bench, right? We cheer on the best intentions -- Seattle's Mayor Greg Nickels inspiring Kyoto commitments from other mayors, or Austin's goal to get 30 percent of their energy from renewables by 2020, or Portland's water system having a secret ingredient that makes everyone want to bike to work in the rain.

You take it from here... try to expand that list to 10 cities. It's not easy. Popular Science tried for 50. Of course they were scientific about it. They used raw data from the U.S. Census Bureau and the National Geographic Society’s Green Guide.

PopSci then compiled these statistics into four broad categories -- electricity, transportation, green living, and recycling/green perspective -- and used the sum of these four scores to determine a city’s place in the rankings. Each city's total score is somewhere on a scale from 1 to 30.

The overall winner: Portland, Oregon, with 23.1 points. Electricity: 7.1 Transportation: 6.4 Green Living: 4.8 Recycling/Perspective: 4.8.

"America’s top green city has it all: Half its power comes from renewable sources, a quarter of the workforce commutes by bike, carpool or public transportation, and it has 35 buildings certified by the U.S. Green Building Council."

The next 11 cities on the list scored above 20 points, including my home, Seattle, at number 8 (22.1), Chicago at number 9 (21.3) and Austin at number 10 (21.0). Beyond that, the scores plummet. In fact, only 21 of the cities made what I would consider a passing grade of 60 percent. By the time we get past number 30 (Alexandria, VA, 15.7) the scores are less than half of the possible total.

High scores in the electricity category were essential to making this list at all. The only two cities to make the top 20 with low electricity scores had the maximum score for transportation (New York, 10 out of 10 points for having a real public-transit system) or green living (Chicago, 5 out of 5 points for its devotion to green spaces).

In the barely-made-the-team department, at the bottom of the list, we have Greensboro, NC, perhaps by virtue of their name, at number 50 with 10 points.

Congratulations to those who made the list. Now, perhaps we should go back to cheering on best intentions, and save the quantitative analysis for a few years down the road when more cities have accomplished their goals.

Go, Seattle, Go!

Related links of interest:
Austin blogger Ryan Brown mapped the cities using Google Maps.
Fred Jackson's blog features graphical views of the carbon footprints of each state.