It's Green to be married

Maybe soon they will find that large families are good for the planet as well?


From here:

STUDY: ECO FALLOUT
Divorce hurts the planet too
MARTIN MITTELSTAEDT
ENVIRONMENT REPORTER
December 4, 2007
Now there is one more reason for couples to try to stay together: Researchers have added divorce to the long list of things that are bad for the environment.

U.S. researchers, in a study believed to be the first to link marriage breakdown with its environmental impact, have concluded divorce definitely isn't green.

They say it leads to "resource-inefficient lifestyles" that dramatically increase the consumption of water and electricity, and demands for housing.

Although it isn't surprising that the study found separated couples and their children consume more than they would had their families remained intact, the amount of damage they cause to the environment hasn't been quantified in such detail before.

The study also indicated that encouraging people to fall in love again would be good for the planet, because renewed cohabitation reduces a householder's environmental footprint back to the size of those who are married.

"Divorce increases the number of households, which increases the demands for more household products such as washing machines, fridges," said Jianguo Liu, one of the study authors.

Dr. Liu is director of the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University.

Details of the study are being published this week in the online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers tracked divorce and resource use in 12 countries, both developed and developing, and found marriage breakdown packs a harmful hit.

In those countries, divorce created a total of 7.4 million extra households in or around the year 2000, fuelling extra needs for more consumer goods.

Canada wasn't on the list, but researchers looked at the United States, Greece, Romania, Spain, Brazil and Cambodia, among others.

The number of couples divorcing is also rising internationally, indicating that the environmental harm from marriage breakdown is on a sharp upswing, according to the study.

In the United States, households headed by a person who was divorced rose to 15.6 million in 2000 from 3.4 million in 1970.

"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," Dr. Liu said. "The consequent increases in consumption of water and energy and using more space are being seen everywhere."

Although the study focused on divorce, it said other societal trends, such as the decline in multigenerational households and the rise in the total of empty nesters are having similar environmental effects by reducing the size of households while increasing their number.

The study found that in the United States, divorced households spent between 46 and 56 per cent more on electricity and water for each person than in married households.

Looking at that country in 2005, it said divorced households could have saved more than 38 million rooms, 73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity and about 2.4 trillion litres of water if their resource use matched that of married couples.

The amounts of water, housing and electricity indicated by the U.S. figures are the equivalent of a very large city. The water alone is equal to the amount used by about 13 million people, at typical North American usage rates, and the extra spending on the two utilities cost $10.5-billion (U.S.).

In the 12 countries surveyed, divorced households typically had one to two fewer people living in them than average married households.

Dr. Liu said he has found that people are surprised that his research shows divorce has more than just social and individual consequences.

"Among the people that I talked to, no one was aware of the environmental impacts of divorce," he said.

Dr. Liu said the study underestimates the extra pollution from divorce because it did not tabulate other factors that occur when couples separate, such as increased car ownership and more driving to visit children, which both increase greenhouse gas emissions.

In light of the research, he said, governments should provide tax incentives for divorced people to remarry or co-habitat, publicize information about the environmental impact of divorce, and extend waiting periods before allowing divorces.