LA Times: In divorce, even the environment pays a price

If you thought divorce was bad for the kids, you should see what it does to the environment.

A study published Monday in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science found that the resource inefficiency of divorced households resulted in an extra 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity use in the U.S. in 2005 — about 7% of total home use.

“Turning on the light uses the same energy whether there are two people or four people in the room,” said lead author Jianguo Liu, an ecologist at Michigan State University.

The extra electricity generation spews more carbon dioxide into the air, exacerbating global warming.

“If you don’t want to get remarried, maybe move in with somebody you like,” said Liu, who just celebrated his 20th wedding anniversary.

Other potential solutions include polygamy, communal living or roommates.

“I’m just a scientist trying to present the facts,” Liu said. “I’m not promoting one way or another.”

Read the whole article.

Posted in * Culture-Watch, * Economics, Politics, Energy, Natural Resources, Marriage & Family

11 comments on “LA Times: In divorce, even the environment pays a price

  1. Hope says:

    Just silly. Full of holes. I will believe it after significant and continual replication of his findings by a lot of other people.

  2. Marie Blocher says:

    Reminds me of a slogan from years ago –
    “Save Water- Shower with Someone”

  3. Wilfred says:

    #1 Hope, regardless of whether “global warming” is real, and ignoring the sillly polygamy “solution” mentioned, we don’t need a lot of research to establish that two households use more energy (and cost more to operate) than one.

  4. Undergroundpewster says:

    More revelations will come from this research. Teenagers shower too much, drive around too much, and leave on too many lights. Round them up and put them in work camps in a rustic, electric free place. Or maybe abort them before they are born, isn’t that where the global warming debate is headed? I mean, get rid of people because people are bad for Gaia.

  5. libraryjim says:

    Pewster,
    we’ve already read in the news of one woman who ‘terminated’ her pregnancy because she didn’t want to bear the responsibility of introducing another person to further strain the already fragile Earth as it is.
    In other words, murder of the unborn is acceptable if the goal is preserving the earth, and forwarding conservation efforts. 🙄

  6. Undergroundpewster says:

    L.J., I missed that one. Can you find a reference?

  7. Hope says:

    #1 Hope, regardless of whether “global warming” is real, and ignoring the sillly polygamy “solution” mentioned, we don’t need a lot of research to establish that two households use more energy (and cost more to operate) than one.

    The fallacy is the “all things being equal” one. Quite possibly I don’t have a valid sample but among the households I see, people go from a couple of apartments to a house that has much more than double the space, they heat way more rooms than they each did separately and have at least as many if not many more appliances. Once upon a time two lived more cheaply than one because there were true economies, people shared a car, had one bathroom, heated less space and so on. I am not sure that would hold true these days. I expect we waste more of everything by having our throwaway society than we waste by not sharing space. We would probably save as much just by living more modestly. Not that I am arguing for divorce, understand.

  8. libraryjim says:

    Thanks, Pewster. I couldn’t get back to the thread until now.

    Jim <><

  9. Adam 12 says:

    I always thought that environmental thought tended to skew away from the damage caused to the environment by promiscuity, children born out of wedlock, diseases spread by casual sexual contact, etc. Often it seems that those who bill themselves as Earth-first people tend to look at sexuality as a basic right that is beyond criticism.

  10. libraryjim says:

    That seems to be the mindset in the article Pewster linked to, the sin is not in being sexually active but in bearing children!