Just when you think you’ve heard it all, along comes a new study that finds yet one more way in which we humans can screw up the environment: get divorced.
Actually, as weird as it might sound at first, the discovery — published in this week’s online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences – makes perfect sense once you consider the typical result of divorce: two people and, possibly, children who once all shared one home now live in two separate 2,000- to 3,000-square-foot households with two sets of refrigerators, two water-heaters, two heating-and-air-conditioning units, etc.
“People’s first reaction to this research is surprise, and then it seems simple,” said Jianguo “Jack” Liu, who conducted the study with Eunice Yu, his research assistant at Michigan State University. “But a lot of things become simple after research is done. Our challenges were to connect the dots and quantify their relationships. People have been talking about how to protect the environment and combat climate change, but divorce is an overlooked factor that needs to be considered.”
Liu and Yu started out with a simple question: how do the world’s rising divorce rates affect humanity’s consumption of resources? They then examined housing space per capita and utility costs to show that divorce eliminates the economies of scale enjoyed by married families.
“Not only the United States, but also other countries, including developing countries such as China and places with strict religious policies regarding divorce, are having more divorced households,” Liu said. “The consequent increases in consumption of water and energy and using more space are being seen everywhere.”
In the U.S. alone, they found that divorce in 2005 led to the consumption of 73 billion more kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion more gallons of water than would have been used had all those couples stayed married. Divorced people also raised the demand for housing by 38 million extra rooms, they found.
In only 12 countries (including the U.S., Brazil, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Greece, Mexico and South Africa) around the globe, divorce increased the number of households by 7.4 million between 1998 and 2002, the study reported.
Liu and Yu found that two other trends of modern life — fewer multigenerational households and more people staying single longer — also have a negative impact on the environment. On the plus side, though, they discovered that, when divorced people remarried, their environmental footprint returned to about the same size as in their previous marriage. So, good for you, Liz Taylor!
Liu said the study shows that creating positive environmental policies is even more complex than many governments might realize.
“Solutions are beyond a single idea,” he said. “Consider the production of biofuel. Biofuel is made from plants, which also require water and space. We’re showing divorce has significant competition for that water and space. On the other hand, more divorce demands more energy. This creates a challenging dilemma and requires more creative solutions.”
Are these social factors — couples getting divorced, kids living on their own longer, Grandma and Grandpa staying in their own homes on the other side of the country — really things to consider in tackling problems like climate change, rising energy demands and environmental protection? If so, how?
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Shirley Siluk Gregory
Shirley Siluk Gregory, a transplanted Chicagoan now living in Northwest Florida, represents the progressive half of Green Options' Red, Green and Blue segment. She holds a bachelor's degree in Geological Sciences from Northwestern University but graduated in 1984, just when the market for geologists was flatter than the Florida landscape. Just as well, though: she had little interest in spending her life either in a laboratory or, heaven forbid, an oil field. So, of course, she went into journalism. After extremely low-paying but fun and educational stints at several suburban Chicago weeklies and dailies, Shirley and her then-boyfriend/now-husband Scott found themselves displaced by a media buyout and spending the next several years working as freelancers. Among their credits: The Chicago Tribune, a publication for the manufactured-housing industry, and Web Hosting Magazine, a now-defunct publication that came and went with the dotcom era. Shirley's always been concerned about nature and conservation (and an avid pack-rat, as her family can attest to), but became even more rabidly interested in the environment primarily due to two factors: the growing signs that global warming was real and threatening, and the birth of her son, Noah, in 2003. Suddenly, the prospect of a world that might not be quite as habitable in 40 or 50 years took on a whole new, and personal, meaning. Living where she lives now also helped light the fire of Shirley's environmental awareness: her hometown was severely damaged by Hurricane Ivan in 2004, and beaten up again by Hurricane Dennis in 2005. That, and the fact that she and her family were vacationing in New Orleans until the day before Katrina -- and spent 12 hours driving home for a trip that normally takes 3 -- has made Shirley deeply appreciate how fragile our lifestyles are, and how dependent they are on sound management of natural resources and sustainable living practices. That's why she's become a passionate reader and writer about all things green and sustainable.
3 Responses to If You Love the Earth, Stay Married
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Just saw the clip … SCARY!!!!
You raise a good point, Kendra, and it’s one that comes up frequently in almost every “save-the-Earth” discussion I see: overpopulation. Clearly, as more of the planet’s people aspire to living a U.S./European lifestyle, the stress on Earth’s resources will be taxed more than ever before.
It’s such a hot-potato issue, though, especially for certain religions. Sadly, some people seem to have adopted the mindset that, “Well, we’re riding the train off the rails and everything will soon correct itself, overpopulation included.” Not the ideal way to solve the world’s problems, by any means.
I dunno, I think living with our parents forever and not breeding would be even better for the environment than bothering to get married at all. And what’s this about remarrying and correcting your carbon footprint? I heard 2nd marriages have an even slimmer chance of being happily ever after. Anyway, I’m divorced and am glad to know that shacking up with my boyfriend is one more thing I can add to my green scorecard.
And did you see this clip of Liz Taylor being asked if she was ever going to get married again (I think it would be #9 for her?) oh my gosh check it out