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> But in the Midwest and Northeast, where the electricity grid tends to rely on coal power plants, the damage from emissions ranged back up toward five cents a mile.

I'm very skeptical of this claim. NYC and Upstate NY are known to have some of the cleanest electricity grids in the U.S. See chart on page 2 of this EPA report, for example.

http://www.epa.gov/cleanenergy/documents/egridzips/eGRID_9th...

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I would be suspicious of this too, since I believe a lot of New England gets its power from Hydro-Québec (from their HVDC lines) and nuclear sources. Even normalized per capita, Vermont should have one of the lowest carbon footprints, which makes me suspicious of some of their sampling methods, though I haven't read the paper.

You can get a really quick overview of your state's energy profile on the Energy Information Administration website.[0] As you mentioned, the smaller states mostly use nuclear and renewable sources. The clear outlier is Massachusetts, which is about 60% natural gas.

[0]http://www.eia.gov/state/?sid=VT#tabs-4

I'm also suspicious of the scale of the map. Shouldn't they stretch the states with more cars and pinch the ones with less?

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