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Brian Kilroy's picture

Is Divorce Ruining The Planet?

Posted by Brian Kilroy on Tue, 12/04/2007 - 2:00pm

As I toggled through today's news, I was surprised to find an article linking divorce to the decline of our green planet. I thought I'd heard it all, but I guess I was wrong. Now it seems that the Center for Systems Integration and Sustainability at Michigan State University is pointing it's fickle middle finger at divorce, claiming among other things, that divorce contributes to "resource inefficient lifestyles". No kidding!

The article goes on to say that divorce was responsible for "73 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity that could have been saved in the United States (2005) if the energy use of divorced couples had matched that of married couples". Remember that phrase from the movie "Network" where Howard Beal says "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore"? I'm there.

Just what in the world are these scientists thinking? More importantly, don't they have better things to do than worry about how much water divorced people use? Maybe I'm not the best informed person in the world, but I don't need to conduct a clinical study to know that two people living apart use more electricity, and require more washing machines than two living together.

Dear MSU,
Thank you for confirming and quantifying what we already knew. Now, how about joining us at FWW to see what can be done to improve life for the millions of Americans involved in divorce?

To read the entire article, click here.