Even with your slightly lower footprint due to not owning a car you still have a much larger footprint than the world mean. Probably 2-3x. So there are billions of people being "punished" for what you're doing.
But you're not wrong, I almost certainly have a higher footprint than most of the third world.
I guess what I was getting at is that I think the levels New York has are substantially more sustainable than the rest of the US. Sorry for the confusion.
From the article: "New York, with a population of 19.6 million people, had the lowest per capita CO2 emissions – 8 mt per capita. A large portion of the population is located in the New York City metropolitan area where mass transit is readily available and most residences are multi-family units that provide efficiencies of scale in terms of energy for heating and cooling."
Conceivably, we could make electric (or something) transportation systems that can travel across the world and not produce and CO2, but we certainly haven't gotten there yet.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Environmental_impact_of_shippi...
Nobody can predict if another person's life will be better if "x" happens. This is a foundation of suicide prevention.