Consider the environmental damage caused by divorce
Posted by: "Jeremy Swanson"
swanson@storm.ca swannie52
Fri Dec 7, 2007 8:19 am (PST)
Consider the environmental damage caused by divorce
Craig McInnes, Vancouver Sun
Thursday, December 06, 2007
<http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=9d9f4bfe-2476-4
d2b-8114-f61847a866c6>
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=9d9f4bfe-2476-4d2b-8114-f61847a866c6
VICTORIA - My first marriage did not end well. Or maybe I should say it
ended as well as could be expected, given that it did, in fact, end long
before the promise of "until death do you part" came into play.
Fortunately, we had no children to consider, just a large dog, which neither
of us felt we could take with us in our new, reduced circumstances.
As we divided up our belongs and licked our wounds, one thing that became
clear to me was that in addition to the emotional damage, divorce, even in
the absence of children, was a poor financial strategy.
I was moving from a recently renovated house in Toronto with no mortgage to
an expensive apartment with no one to share the rent.
All of the bills for the car, hydro, heat and cable that had been covered by
two salaries were now covered by one.
I had to cash in my nascent retirement savings plan and buy some new things
to fill the most crucial gaps left by the divvying up of the furniture that
we had accumulated together.
Across town, the same story was being repeated. Another household being set
up, another set of services and a new collection of bills.
Yet as I occasionally chewed over that unhappy transition over the past two
decades, until this week it never occurred to me that in addition to the
emotional and financial carnage, the failure of our marriage had also
side-swiped the environment.
This week, a study by researchers from Michigan State University published
in the on-line edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
looked at the how your environmental footprint grows when your marriage ends
in divorce.
The study was a relatively simple mathematical exercise that might be
considered little more than a curiosity were it not for the extraordinary
results.
The authors found -- just as I did -- that following divorce, people moved
to smaller households. Measured on a per-person basis, however, they were
larger; they had more rooms and used more power, water and other resources.
How much more? Cumulatively, the numbers are staggering.
In 2005, in the United States alone, divorced households had 38 million more
rooms than if they were the same as married households.
They used an extra 73 billion kilowatts of electricity with a monthly bill
of $580 million and 2.4 trillion litres of water.
That extra bill represents umpteen power plants all pumping greenhouse gases
into the environment that would not be needed if couples had been able to
work out their differences rather than splitting up.
In my case, even though I try to be socially responsible, I am reasonably
certain that this knowledge would not have inspired my wife and I to stay
together. The other forces at play were too great.
But these numbers do illustrate an important point. While advancements in
technology have been and will continue to be important to our approach to
climate change, social factors are equally if not more important.
In this case, increasing divorce rates over the past several decade have
driven the demand for power and other resources.
So in addition to pursuing investments in new technology as a way of
combating climate change, we also should be looking for help from social
scientists.
For example, which would be more expensive -- building new power plants or
investing in social support systems to help and encourage families to stay
together?
If we could cut the divorce rate by a quarter, the financial and
environmental gains would be enormous.
I'm not suggesting that we should be putting pressure on anyone to stay in a
relationships, especially if they are abusive in any way.
But we have known for a long time that people in stable, long-term
relationships are healthier and happier. Now we can see that such
relationships are also better for the environment.
So it is clear that we as a society have a stake in how individuals live
their lives; we have a right and a responsibility to try to help where we
can. Some people derisively call this social engineering.
I call it trying to build a better world.
cmcinnes@png. <mailto:cmcinnes@png.canwest.com> canwest.com
Craig McInnes's blog <http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/blogs>
www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/blogsConsider the environmental damage caused by divorce
Craig McInnes, Vancouver Sun
Thursday, December 06, 2007
<http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=9d9f4bfe-2476-4
d2b-8114-f61847a866c6>
http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=9d9f4bfe-2476-4d2b-8114-f61847a866c6
VICTORIA - My first marriage did not end well. Or maybe I should say it
ended as well as could be expected, given that it did, in fact, end long
before the promise of "until death do you part" came into play.
Fortunately, we had no children to consider, just a large dog, which neither
of us felt we could take with us in our new, reduced circumstances.
As we divided up our belongs and licked our wounds, one thing that became
clear to me was that in addition to the emotional damage, divorce, even in
the absence of children, was a poor financial strategy.
I was moving from a recently renovated house in Toronto with no mortgage to
an expensive apartment with no one to share the rent.
All of the bills for the car, hydro, heat and cable that had been covered by
two salaries were now covered by one.
I had to cash in my nascent retirement savings plan and buy some new things
to fill the most crucial gaps left by the divvying up of the furniture that
we had accumulated together.
Across town, the same story was being repeated. Another household being set
up, another set of services and a new collection of bills.
Yet as I occasionally chewed over that unhappy transition over the past two
decades, until this week it never occurred to me that in addition to the
emotional and financial carnage, the failure of our marriage had also
side-swiped the environment.
This week, a study by researchers from Michigan State University published
in the on-line edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
looked at the how your environmental footprint grows when your marriage ends
in divorce.
The study was a relatively simple mathematical exercise that might be
considered little more than a curiosity were it not for the extraordinary
results.
The authors found -- just as I did -- that following divorce, people moved
to smaller households. Measured on a per-person basis, however, they were
larger; they had more rooms and used more power, water and other resources.
How much more? Cumulatively, the numbers are staggering.
In 2005, in the United States alone, divorced households had 38 million more
rooms than if they were the same as married households.
They used an extra 73 billion kilowatts of electricity with a monthly bill
of $580 million and 2.4 trillion litres of water.
That extra bill represents umpteen power plants all pumping greenhouse gases
into the environment that would not be needed if couples had been able to
work out their differences rather than splitting up.
In my case, even though I try to be socially responsible, I am reasonably
certain that this knowledge would not have inspired my wife and I to stay
together. The other forces at play were too great.
But these numbers do illustrate an important point. While advancements in
technology have been and will continue to be important to our approach to
climate change, social factors are equally if not more important.
In this case, increasing divorce rates over the past several decade have
driven the demand for power and other resources.
So in addition to pursuing investments in new technology as a way of
combating climate change, we also should be looking for help from social
scientists.
For example, which would be more expensive -- building new power plants or
investing in social support systems to help and encourage families to stay
together?
If we could cut the divorce rate by a quarter, the financial and
environmental gains would be enormous.
I'm not suggesting that we should be putting pressure on anyone to stay in a
relationships, especially if they are abusive in any way.
But we have known for a long time that people in stable, long-term
relationships are healthier and happier. Now we can see that such
relationships are also better for the environment.
So it is clear that we as a society have a stake in how individuals live
their lives; we have a right and a responsibility to try to help where we
can. Some people derisively call this social engineering.
I call it trying to build a better world.
cmcinnes@png. <mailto:cmcinnes@png.canwest.com> canwest.com
Craig McInnes's blog <http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/blogs>
www.canada.com/vancouversun/news/blogs_____
Distributed by:
Jeremy Swanson
FathersCan
Ottawa, Ontario
Phone: (613) 237-1320 ext 2438
<http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fathers-can/>
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fathers-can/<http://fatherscan.blogspot.com/>
http://fatherscan.blogspot.com/<http://www.canada.com/vancouversun/columnists/story.html?id=9d9f4bfe-2476-4d2b-8114-f61847a866c6>
