A Really Inconvenient
Truth: Divorce Is Not
Green
ScienceDaily - The
data are in. Divorce is
bad for the environment.
A novel study that links
divorce with the
environment shows a
global trend of soaring
divorce rates has
created more households
with fewer people, has
taken up more space and
has gobbled up more
energy and water. A
statistical remedy: Fall
back in love.
Cohabitation means less
urban sprawl and softens
the environmental hit.
The findings of Jianguo
"Jack" Liu and Eunice Yu
at Michigan State
University are published
in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of
Sciences.
"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."
Liu and his research
assistant Yu started
with the obvious -- that
divorce rates across the
globe are on the rise.
Housing units, even if
they now have few people
in them, require
resources to construct
them and take up space.
They require fuel to
heat and cool. A
refrigerator uses
roughly the same amount
of energy whether it
belongs to a family of
four or a family of two.
When they calculated the
cost in terms of
increased utilities and
unused housing space per
capita, they discovered
that divorce tosses out
economy of scale. Among
the findings:
- In the United States
alone in 2005, divorced
households used 73
billion kilowatt-hours
of electricity and 627
billion gallons of water
that could have been
saved had household size
remained the same as
that of married
households. Thirty-eight
million extra rooms were
needed with associated
costs for heating and
lighting.
- In the United States
and 11 other countries
such as Brazil, Costa
Rica, Ecuador, Greece,
Mexico and South Africa
between 1998 and 2002,
if divorced households
had combined to have the
same average household
size as married
households, there could
have been 7.4 million
fewer households in
these countries.
- The numbers of
divorced households in
these countries ranged
from 40,000 in Costa
Rica to almost 16
million in the United
States around 2000.
- The number of rooms
per person in divorced
households was 33
percent to 95 percent
greater than in married
households.
To track what happens
when divorced people
returned to married
life, the study compared
married households with
households that had
weathered marriage,
divorce and remarriage.
The results: The
environmental footprint
shrunk back to that of
consistently married
households.
Liu, a University
Distinguished Professor
of fisheries and
wildlife and Rachel
Carson Chair in
Ecological
Sustainability at MSU's
Center for Systems
Integration and
Sustainability, has
spent more than two
decades integrating
ecology with social
sciences to understand
the complex
interrelationships
between nature and
humans and how those
interactions affect the
environment and
biodiversity. Liu and Yu
began to discuss this
research project when Yu
was a high school
student.
This new work also
acknowledges that
divorce is not the only
lifestyle trend changing
family living structures
-- the demise of
multigenerational
households, people
remaining single longer
are examples.
"People's first reaction
to this research is
surprise, and then it
seems simple," Liu said.
"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."
The research, Liu said,
shows that environmental
policy is more complex
than one single
solution. Governments
across the world may
need to start factoring
in divorce when
examining environmental
policy, Liu said.
"Solutions are beyond a
single idea," Liu 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."
The research was funded
by the National Science
Foundation, the National
Institutes of Health and
the Michigan
Agricultural Experiment
Station.
Adapted from materials
provided by Michigan
State University. |
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