Get Married For The Environment
By Justin Gardner | Related entries in Economy, Energy, Environment, Science, TechnologyWell, not exactly, but it might help.
This according to a very interesting article in the Wash Post today that details how divorce is hurting the environment…
The analysis found that cohabiting couples and families around the globe use resources more efficiently than households that have split up. The researchers calculated that in 2005, divorced American households used between 42 and 61 percent more resources per person than before they separated, spending 46 percent more per person on electricity and 56 percent more on water.Their paper, published yesterday in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also found that if the divorced couples had stayed together in 2005, the United States would have saved 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and 627 billion gallons of water in that year alone. [...]
“Hopefully this will inform people about the environmental impact of divorce,” [Jianguo] Liu, [one of the paper's co-authors,] said in an interview yesterday. “For a long time we’ve blamed industries for environmental problems. One thing we’ve ignored is the household.”
It makes perfect sense, but maybe we should tie it less to marriage and more to cohabitation? Maybe there could be some sort of carbon offset tax breaks for people who live together? Could be a boon for families too.
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 4th, 2007 and is filed under Economy, Energy, Environment, Science, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
December 4th, 2007 at 10:43 am
It makes perfect sense, but maybe we should tie it less to marriage and more to cohabitation?
I think this misses the point a little bit. Ultimately, the efficiency of a married couple, versus non-married individuals, does **in part** stems from cohabitation. The light that is used for one is used for all living in the house.
However, you would find that individuals that are cohabitating, as opposed to married, are less efficient than married couples; i.e., roommates that simply share space expenses or resources, but not INCOME. Married individuals have a mutual benefit to sharing resources and expenses, because they generally share INCOME.
Cohabitating individuals actually derive an economic benefit from **increasing** their own personal use of resources if the expenses are shared equally among all the cohabitants, because they generally do not share income.
Justin, certainly I have my proclivities, for which I will fess-up, but you do not miss an opportunity to deride any alleged benefit to traditional marriage. Just a casual observation my friend.
December 4th, 2007 at 11:00 pm
Sounds good. I’ll propose tomorrow.