Our environmentalist friends will find a recent study covered in the USA Today interesting. Jianguo Liu, a Michigan State University professor of fisheries and wildlife, conducted an analysis considering the relationship between utility consumption and housing space per capita in married and divorced households. Liu notes that a family that divorces creates more households with fewer people, which results in more energy consumption (more water, more land, more energy per person). The report actually encourages those considering marriage or divorce, saying, "Environmental impacts of divorce and other lifestyles such as separation should be considered when making personal choices."
Insightful. Imagine it. The young man thinking of popping the question gives the whole relationship a final, determining consideration: "I think us being together will be better for Mother Earth."
Well, there's all kinds of other ways to improve green-ness than to stay married. People could shack up or join a commune. So marriage, to the strict environmentalist, is not the moral imperative. But it is a morally superior action to divorce.
Moreover, the fact that environmental impacts should be seriously evaluated before couples come together in marriage or separate in divorce seems a bit bizarre. Strange days.
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