Looking for a romantic way to do your bit for the planet? Then move in with your lover, take baths together and snuggle up on the sofa to watch TV together.
An awful lot of energy could be saved if only people shared things more, especially their homes. The evidence comes from the opposite end of the love spectrum. According to a recent study, if all the couples who divorced in the US had stayed together, in 2005 alone they would have used 2373 billion litres less water and 73 billion kilowatt-hours less electricity. Each divorced person spent 46 per cent more on electricity and 56 per cent more on water.
In 2005 alone, divorced people in the US used an extra 73 billion kilowatt hours of electricity
Divorce, along with the demise of the extended family, is helping to drive the growth in the number of households, which is accelerating faster than the global population. The good news is that remarriage reduces consumption to pre-divorce levels. Of course, you don't have to pop the question - living together or sharing with friends works too.
After your home, perhaps the next most important thing to share is your car. Lift-sharing schemes can help you find someone who does the same journey as you. And if you don't need to drive every day, you could swap your car for membership of a car-sharing scheme, a form of car rental. Studies indicate that if you hire a car only when you need it, rather than owning one, you'll drive a lot less.
Read more: Blueprint for a better world
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Have your say
Sharing your home saves a lot of energy, agreed. When calculating your carbon footprint, the WWF asks how many people live in your house. The more, the better your score. This leads to the absurd conclusion that couples with 5 or 6 children have a far lower footprint per capita than couples with a comparable lifestyle but no or a few children. Sharing saves energy only if you share with already existing persons. Creating plenty of children is hardly energy-friendly.
Why is that absurd? It is per capita, so the overall footprint of the familly still climbs as you infect our planet with more smelly humans.
Yes, but few people will think as far as that. A parent of six that does the calculation will get a low personal carbon footprint and conclude he is doing very well compared to the average, without pausing to think that all of his/her kids have their own footprint as well, and a few kids less would have saved heaps of energy.
By the way, "infect" and "smelly humans" are your words. I most definitely do not despise humans, just concerned about overpopulation and its consequences for us all.
The smell must be an issue though. The more crowded we get the more people will seek their own territory, their "personal space". I certainly can't cope with the overpowering stench of many perfumes and aftershaves. I use the bus every day but it can be a nightmare if someone is unwashed or overly scented.
Infest would be a more appropriate word than infect. I don't understand why successive governments have given financial encouragement to people with children
"just concerned about overpopulation"
Cut universal health-care, welfare, third-world aid.
The disincentive will balance the more able and successful against the rapidly propagating feckless. In the long run quality not quantity.
"Sharing your home saves a lot of energy, agreed. When calculating your carbon footprint, the WWF asks how many people live in your house."
This is the same WWF that had this to say on their G8 climate score card:
"WWF does not consider nuclear power to be a viable policy option. The indicators "emissions per capita", "emissions per GDP" and "CO2 per kWh electricity" for all countries
have therefore been adjusted as if the generation of electricity from nuclear power had produced 350 gCO2/kWh (emission factor for natural gas). Without the adjustment, the
original indicators for France would have been much lower, e.g. 86 gCO2/kWh."
Let me translate this into english for you: France and Sweden look too good in comparison to Germany and Denmark who have strived very hard to adopt the useless paleo-technologies that we favour. Therefor we reserve the right to make outright fabrications as we mark our lies with a little asterisk.
I wouldn't take any advice from the WWF.
LOL.
I don't consider ethanol from corn to be a viable policy option. Therefore I have adjusted the figures as if each square km of corn fields emitted as much radioactive contamination as Chernobyl.
Also, I don't like paying taxes. So I have adjusted the figures as if each dollar collected from me is equivalent to 759.3 kg of carbon emissions by the government.
I have also decided I may have as many children as I please and all of their emissions will be "off budget". Instead each one will be considered equivalent to 6372 kg of carbon sequestration, credited to me.
I used to support the WWF. They have done a lot of good work. Why must they go out of their way to prove themselves a bunch of Politically Correct idiots?
N.S. stop banging on constantly about bloody climate change & energy use.- are you a scientific magazine or a religious text with 'environmental thought for today'?
Oh & isn't that interesting- divorce is something that the 'evil' & conservative Church has usually opposed- who'd a thought that!
Grrrrrr
According to research by The Barna Research Group, Christians have a slightly higher divorce rate than the general public.
Your physical prowess amazes me though - that even on your high horse, you manage to have your head in the sand.
If you actually read what I said for a start....
And it is all you Climate Hysterics who need to get off your high horses.
Whether the you believe the Rapture is supernatural or man-made (Going Galt, opting out as in Ayn Rand's novel),
WE DON'T CARE. YOU NEED US WE DON'T NEED YOU.
We are the able and self reliant. You lefties are the whiners and beggars forever biting the hand that feeds, never changing, always beyond reproach. It is always the right-wing to blame.
We are sick of it. See how you do without us and our talents.
I think you'll find that if society got organised based on your ideas, it would be far from the paradise for the strong and healthy you imagine. A large crowd of miserable peasants dominated by a few warlords, I guess. And even the strong can have a spot of bad luck- what if you got crippled in an accident- would you accept your fate gracefully and go and die somewhere our of view of the luckier ones, or would start whining for some human compassion after all?
Well, its clear that most of the people making comments on this article will not be able to share a house....
Oh yes, you are the able and self-reliant, just like your slave-keeping forefathers. You are the kind who sees other people as mere tools to be used so that you, God's gift to humanity, don't have to do any actual work. Hypocrite.
Who needs slavery? The end of slavery was the invention of the steam engine by Thomas Newcommen (then improved by Watt).
Every time a labour saving device is invented lefties say this will put people out of work. Well good.
Society is a pyramid, we don't need millions tilling the soil now so they are surplus to requirements.
Done organically by disincentives (lack of work, lack of money, even the promotion of homosexuality by the Bilderbergers) population will correct itself.
If artificial tampering is done like in China (breed for Mao's army now don't, have one child) you get the cruellest scenario. This is much the same as lassies-faire - state intervention leads to hardships that the market and human affairs will naturally sort out in an organic fashion.
This whole credit crunch and past depressions were cause by government intervention - telling banks who to give loans to, then failing/lying to protect securities by offloading onto companies "too big to fail" and the Fed keeping rates artificially low because it allowed minorities to buy houses and for politicos to win votes.
State planning is a nightmare and another one is unrolling with this AGW scare. Yes improve technologies but what they want is TOTAL control of the economy to MICRO-MANAGE every little aspect and this will lead to stagnation.
I'm doing great, then!
I've only been married once, and we're still married, live together, and have four kids all under one roof.
Also, the house we live in is made mainly of wood, so we've sequestered on the order of 100,000 pounds of carbon, instead of letting those trees die in the forest and rot, releasing the carbon back to the atmosphere as CO2.
Aren't I just a model of climate consciousness?
I have to say too many kids is not green any more.
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