You're the one arguing that making elections more representative of the actual population would lead to "stealing representation away from rural areas of a State."
Yes.
But let us be clear - that DOES NOT MEAN THEY ARE IN CHARGE. You seem to keep trying to drive this to the ends - to black and white - as if *all* power vests in one place or another - either one is in complete charge or another. That's not how it works. There is a distribution of power, a sharing. What you propose would change the current distribution, and I am not convinced that's a great idea.
That does not mean that the folks who wold lose power currently have all of it - they don't. But they'd have less, and I think some major concerns could be missed. And, as noted earlier - ecological impact is not actually the big issue involved.
And that's a big reason why your government is so dysfunctional and extremely poor at getting policy results the actual population desires.
Actually, it isn't. For a highly diverse society like ours, the system can work out quite well. It is only more recently that it has gone quite so downhill.
That's suburbs, not cities.
They are not separable. The cities *need* the suburbs to remain economically viable. The city itself does not hold enough people to support its costs and economic engine.
So, if you are counting the ecological impact of the city without the suburb, your are cherrypicking in a way that sweeps a chunk of reality under the rug.
Rural areas in the US have influence disproportionate to the number of people living there (primarily because of the Senate). That's inherently wrong.
Systems are not inherently right or wrong. *Results* might be.
It can be argued that removing the protections, in this type of case, would reduce the practical and effective representation of individuals within rural areas *below* that of individuals in urban areas.
Again, Manhattan residents have the lowest greenhouse gas footprint in the US.
Yes - if you draw an arbitrary line around the area such that you exclude a large portion of its *actual* ecological impact, you get that result. But, if you treat it as the larger, more organic beast that it is, the numbers are not so great.
Oh, and New York is only one city. Los Angeles doesn't fare nearly so well, even if you cherry pick. Not *all* population centers are ecologically nice. So, more cherrypicking...
