Stay Married or Murder Mother Earth! May 13, 2009
Posted by Onely in As If!, Food for Thought, Just Saying..Tags: divorced households, group housing, jianguo liu, living alone, marriage good for environment, marriage mythology, realconcepts, singles bad for environment
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So apparently singles are bad for the environment, according to this AP article and this RealConcepts blog post.
Households with fewer people are simply not as efficient as those with more people sharing
says ecologist Jianguo Liu at Michigan State, who analyzed the environmental impact of divorce.
Per person, divorced households spent more per person per month for electricity, compared to a married household, as multiple people can be watching the same television, listening to the same radio, cooking on the same stove and or eating under the same lights.
Ok, so here are just some of the points that Liu doesn’t seem to consider:
Singles often generally use less space and smaller cars than married people. A married household may have one person doing laundry downstairs while another person watches TV upstairs. (If a single person can do laundry downstairs and watch TV upstairs at the same time, then their problems are way bigger than the dying planet’s.) Multi-person households need bigger microwaves, bigger laundry machines. Lisa points out that “a single person may be willing to be cold or hot to save energy, which they can do because it won’t affect anyone else in the household”. Moreover, a single person who keeps their heat at a decent temp and gets energy star windows is going to expend less energy than a couple living next door who doesn’t.
Onely.Org 