On first reading, this argument–from the right wing American Thinker–is actually kind of clever:
In fact, if the left truly cares about preserving the environment, reducing carbon emissions, saving the planet, and all that glop, then it should wholeheartedly embrace conservative social values. Consider stable and traditional marriage. According to the Census Bureau, 96.6 million Americans over age 18 are unmarried and 31.7 million Americans (27% of the all households) live alone. This trend towards Americans living alone or out of wedlock is rapidly accelerating — and it is destroying the environment.
A stable married couple lives in a single home, has only one set of utilities, illuminates the home with a single lighting system, and economizes on overhead in many other ways. Adult Americans who live alone or in unstable relationships dramatically increase the need for dwelling space, electrical power, heating and cooling systems, streets and city maintenance systems, and also cars on those city streets.
Moreover, in traditional marriages which reach a level of economic affluence, it is more likely that only one member of the family needs to work, reducing traffic congestion and all the myriad environmental problems of a large and commuting metropolitan population. If Americans married and stayed married, the impact on all those problems which leftists pretend to worry about would dramatically diminish.
There’s more along those lines, too. But two can play at this game. By the same logic, it’s time for the American Thinker and social conservatives to embrace gay marriage–due to the vast environmental benefits.
Exactly. One could also argue that the biggest decision regarding environmental footprint anyone can take is not to have kids. So there goes traditionalist conservatism. But hey.
Does the author describe why all those big homes in the suburbs and exurbs are owned by divorcees and single parents? Oh, wait… they’re not.
Does the author explain why all those people who plug themselves into a car-based lifestyle are single or divorced? Oh, wait… they’re not.
Does the author show how no families every shop at big-box stores that import everything in from all over the world? Oh, wait… families do shop there.
Does the author propose how getting married will bring people into the cities to live in space and energy efficient apartments, discontinue their reliance on cars, shop at mom-and-pop establishments, and other things that many more families (compared to single individuals and divorcees) are currently not doing?
If I killed and ate my neighbors, that would be good for the environment too! Not only would their use of the electric and transportation grids go to zero, but it would reduce my demand for methane-generating cattle.
I’m unmarried, and live with four other people. My partner lives with three other people. If we were to move in together, we’d actually be “creating” another household. I imagine that a lot of single people are in this situation.
Even more importantly, all houses are not the same! I bet five single-bedroom city apartments have less impact on the environment than one single-family house in the suburbs!
Their argument applies far better to increasing density (move to the city, use bike or public transit) than it does to “traditional marriage.” And.. “traditionally,” weren’t married people far more likely to live with parents, grandparents, etc? That would reduce the number of households, too.
haha… very nice.
And if right-wingers really cared about reducing the number of abortions, they would support financing contraception and family planning instead of opposing it. Go figure…
D0 they really believe if someone’s not married, they’re probably living alone? Some unmarried live alone, true. Most frequently however, they have one or more roommates to share the bills. And that’s been true for over a century – Arthur Conan Doyle felt comfortable using that arrangement as the basic setting for his Sherlock Holmes stories.
And who thinks marriage still makes it likely one member of the couple isn’t working? The 2000 census was the first one where the majority of households with children had 2 working parents, but marriages without children crossed that threshold decades ago.
That’s the problem of writing in an echo chamber. If all you hear back is “yeah” you might never realize what you’ve written makes no sense.
Jim Johnson correctly notes the bait-and-switch: “American Thinker” starts by saying “This trend towards Americans living alone or out of wedlock is rapidly accelerating”, but then goes on to talk only about “living alone”. The living out of wedlock has the same impact as being married, but they never mention that.
It’s quite likely that the inhabitant of a major metro area will not own or drive a car at all. That represents *absolute* pollution savings, and is far more significant than how many apartments the extended family dwells in. If they didn’t live there and use the electricity, someone else would, so there would be no net pollution savings. There’s still (at least) one less car.
in traditional marriages which reach a level of economic affluence, it is more likely that only one member of the family needs to work
WAS more likely. NEEDED to work. I fixed that tense because the author is describing 60 years ago instead of today. I have never seen a family that “reached affluence” sufficient for just one spouse to work. If you need to work at all, your spouse does too. I’ve seen people *born rich* who managed to have just one member of the workforce. It would not surprise me if that is the baseline assumption of normality for the brand of conservative pundits who write for American Thinker.
If they want that sort of marriage back, they should strengthen the social safety net, cease their redistribution of wealth through capital-gains tax credits and turn those into payroll tax cuts, reduce and subsidize college tuition, etc. Then maybe more couples could make ends meet with just one breadwinner. It was, after all, the type of economy we had in the ’50s.
Bruce Walker’s first paragraph is enough to discredit his argument:
There are few areas of policy in which the left is more united than “Green” living. The risible projections in The Population Bomb, the mendacious researchers of Official Global Warming, the shrewish propagandists whose lies about DDT condemned millions of poor children to awful deaths, the wistful incantations by Obama about how “renewable energy” will make our life bliss — all these, and more, are part of modern leftism.
I wonder what it is that these people are so desperately afraid of that they are driven to pull such absurd non sequiturs out of their “hats” in order to demonize liberals/progressives/The Left.
Ratshag wrote: “If I killed and ate my neighbors, that would be good for the environment too! Not only would their use of the electric and transportation grids go to zero, but it would reduce my demand for methane-generating cattle.”
@13: Because anti-environmentalism is a religion. Whenever any topic pertaining to anything about ecology or human health comes up, out come the acolytes with their chapters-and-verses about “DDT bans” and “Alar results” and other fetishes that were cobwebby even 30 years ago.
I have never seen a family that “reached affluence” sufficient for just one spouse to work. If you need to work at all, your spouse does too. I’ve seen people *born rich* who managed to have just one member of the workforce.
About half of my coworkers are the sole workers in their families. Some of those are because of divorce or separation, but many are because it is more convenient for one spouse not to work. In my family, I have ‘reached affluence’ sufficient that my wife doesn’t have to work. She’s been attending college instead, just in case anything happens to me. I was not *born rich* and I never got anything from my parents except bad credit when they fraudulently used my name to get loans while they were living on welfare.
Now granted, I’m not a conservative, I’m a independen. I don’t want a world, however, where everyone is expected to live 1950s cookie cutter lives. I want a world where everyone can live for their own fulfillment and not off of other people.
1. It’s absolute BS that single people consume more than married people. After all, married people tend to produce these things called kids which in turn leads to doubling, tripling, etc. depending on how many of them they have, of the total consumption of the household. In addition, single people tend to go to expensive vacations 10,000 miles from home less frequently than couples
2. But all of that is completely irrelevant. Let’s for the sake of the argument assume that a married couple consumes 50% of what they would consume individually. That would cut their per capita consumption by half but only for those who wouldn’t otherwise marry (and you can adjust this on a per year-spent-not-married basis, whatever). In the best case you will lower the total consumption by a few tens of of percents, which gain will be wiped out by economic growth in a few years. While what is need is end of economic growth and reduction of the total consumption roughly by a factor of 100 which is to come from reduction of the population by a factor of 20 and of per capita consumption by a factor of 5 (again, very rough estimates, and only for the US). Try getting “conservative values” to agree with such a change….
We have gone over before, but it is worth repeating – doing less than 1% of what needs to be done to solve our global sustainability crisis is pretty much equivalent to BAU.
Reading the article now, this is simply laughable:
Conservatism solves other environmental problems. If large numbers of Americans home-schooled, then all the energy which public schools consume, the land schools occupy, and the buses which congest our street could be shrunk, or even cleared. There are an estimated 130,000 public schools in America — each a vast carbon footprint. Conservatives would replace these polluting education factories with “Green” cottage-industry home-schooling, no?
Does it ever cross their mind that instead of homeschooling kids and raise them to be semi-literate bible-thumping morons (and does it even need mentioning that all those nice qualities go hand in hand with being completely environmentally illiterate), the better way to lower the carbon footprint of schools would be for kids to walk to them or use mass transit rather than ride buses? As they do in most of the rest of the world…
I came here to make some comments about roommates, group marriage, city living, etc, but all of you other commenters have already hit it out of the park. Thanks!
Sign up to get the latest science news delivered weekly right to your inbox!
About Chris Mooney
Chris is a science and political journalist and commentator and the author of three books, including the New York Times bestselling The Republican War on Science--dubbed "a landmark in contemporary political reporting" by Salon.com and a "well-researched, closely argued and amply referenced indictment of the right wing's assault on science and scientists" by Scientific American--Storm World, and Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future, co-authored by Sheril Kirshenbaum. They also write "The Intersection" blog together for Discover blogs.
For a longer bio and contact information, see here.
“and all that glop”? Really? I think that kind of says it all, doesn’t it?
Exactly. One could also argue that the biggest decision regarding environmental footprint anyone can take is not to have kids. So there goes traditionalist conservatism. But hey.
Our fairly lefty household goes a step further and houses two room mates, who are single, further reducing our shared utility costs.
Does the author describe why all those big homes in the suburbs and exurbs are owned by divorcees and single parents? Oh, wait… they’re not.
Does the author explain why all those people who plug themselves into a car-based lifestyle are single or divorced? Oh, wait… they’re not.
Does the author show how no families every shop at big-box stores that import everything in from all over the world? Oh, wait… families do shop there.
Does the author propose how getting married will bring people into the cities to live in space and energy efficient apartments, discontinue their reliance on cars, shop at mom-and-pop establishments, and other things that many more families (compared to single individuals and divorcees) are currently not doing?
If I killed and ate my neighbors, that would be good for the environment too! Not only would their use of the electric and transportation grids go to zero, but it would reduce my demand for methane-generating cattle.
Why are you looking at me like that?
Love that final killer point!
I don’t buy it.
I’m unmarried, and live with four other people. My partner lives with three other people. If we were to move in together, we’d actually be “creating” another household. I imagine that a lot of single people are in this situation.
Even more importantly, all houses are not the same! I bet five single-bedroom city apartments have less impact on the environment than one single-family house in the suburbs!
Their argument applies far better to increasing density (move to the city, use bike or public transit) than it does to “traditional marriage.” And.. “traditionally,” weren’t married people far more likely to live with parents, grandparents, etc? That would reduce the number of households, too.
haha… very nice.
And if right-wingers really cared about reducing the number of abortions, they would support financing contraception and family planning instead of opposing it. Go figure…
D0 they really believe if someone’s not married, they’re probably living alone? Some unmarried live alone, true. Most frequently however, they have one or more roommates to share the bills. And that’s been true for over a century – Arthur Conan Doyle felt comfortable using that arrangement as the basic setting for his Sherlock Holmes stories.
And who thinks marriage still makes it likely one member of the couple isn’t working? The 2000 census was the first one where the majority of households with children had 2 working parents, but marriages without children crossed that threshold decades ago.
That’s the problem of writing in an echo chamber. If all you hear back is “yeah” you might never realize what you’ve written makes no sense.
Jim Johnson correctly notes the bait-and-switch: “American Thinker” starts by saying “This trend towards Americans living alone or out of wedlock is rapidly accelerating”, but then goes on to talk only about “living alone”. The living out of wedlock has the same impact as being married, but they never mention that.
It’s quite likely that the inhabitant of a major metro area will not own or drive a car at all. That represents *absolute* pollution savings, and is far more significant than how many apartments the extended family dwells in. If they didn’t live there and use the electricity, someone else would, so there would be no net pollution savings. There’s still (at least) one less car.
in traditional marriages which reach a level of economic affluence, it is more likely that only one member of the family needs to work
WAS more likely. NEEDED to work. I fixed that tense because the author is describing 60 years ago instead of today. I have never seen a family that “reached affluence” sufficient for just one spouse to work. If you need to work at all, your spouse does too. I’ve seen people *born rich* who managed to have just one member of the workforce. It would not surprise me if that is the baseline assumption of normality for the brand of conservative pundits who write for American Thinker.
If they want that sort of marriage back, they should strengthen the social safety net, cease their redistribution of wealth through capital-gains tax credits and turn those into payroll tax cuts, reduce and subsidize college tuition, etc. Then maybe more couples could make ends meet with just one breadwinner. It was, after all, the type of economy we had in the ’50s.
Bryan Caplan has argued that having a bunch of kids is good for the environment, because a younger population is more innovative.
Um, yeah.
Bruce Walker’s first paragraph is enough to discredit his argument:
I wonder what it is that these people are so desperately afraid of that they are driven to pull such absurd non sequiturs out of their “hats” in order to demonize liberals/progressives/The Left.
Ratshag wrote: “If I killed and ate my neighbors, that would be good for the environment too! Not only would their use of the electric and transportation grids go to zero, but it would reduce my demand for methane-generating cattle.”
Ah — another Modest Proposal!
http://art-bin.com/art/omodest.html
@13: Because anti-environmentalism is a religion. Whenever any topic pertaining to anything about ecology or human health comes up, out come the acolytes with their chapters-and-verses about “DDT bans” and “Alar results” and other fetishes that were cobwebby even 30 years ago.
One could achieve the same effect with room mates.
TTT (11):
About half of my coworkers are the sole workers in their families. Some of those are because of divorce or separation, but many are because it is more convenient for one spouse not to work. In my family, I have ‘reached affluence’ sufficient that my wife doesn’t have to work. She’s been attending college instead, just in case anything happens to me. I was not *born rich* and I never got anything from my parents except bad credit when they fraudulently used my name to get loans while they were living on welfare.
Now granted, I’m not a conservative, I’m a independen. I don’t want a world, however, where everyone is expected to live 1950s cookie cutter lives. I want a world where everyone can live for their own fulfillment and not off of other people.
Several things to point out:
1. It’s absolute BS that single people consume more than married people. After all, married people tend to produce these things called kids which in turn leads to doubling, tripling, etc. depending on how many of them they have, of the total consumption of the household. In addition, single people tend to go to expensive vacations 10,000 miles from home less frequently than couples
2. But all of that is completely irrelevant. Let’s for the sake of the argument assume that a married couple consumes 50% of what they would consume individually. That would cut their per capita consumption by half but only for those who wouldn’t otherwise marry (and you can adjust this on a per year-spent-not-married basis, whatever). In the best case you will lower the total consumption by a few tens of of percents, which gain will be wiped out by economic growth in a few years. While what is need is end of economic growth and reduction of the total consumption roughly by a factor of 100 which is to come from reduction of the population by a factor of 20 and of per capita consumption by a factor of 5 (again, very rough estimates, and only for the US). Try getting “conservative values” to agree with such a change….
We have gone over before, but it is worth repeating – doing less than 1% of what needs to be done to solve our global sustainability crisis is pretty much equivalent to BAU.
Reading the article now, this is simply laughable:
Does it ever cross their mind that instead of homeschooling kids and raise them to be semi-literate bible-thumping morons (and does it even need mentioning that all those nice qualities go hand in hand with being completely environmentally illiterate), the better way to lower the carbon footprint of schools would be for kids to walk to them or use mass transit rather than ride buses? As they do in most of the rest of the world…
If marriage solves the environmental crisis, then group marriage is even better.
Right?
Why stop at traditional marriage?
Polygamy would at least quadruple enviromental benefits!
Did he ponder restablishing slavery in order to fix the economic downturn as well?
I came here to make some comments about roommates, group marriage, city living, etc, but all of you other commenters have already hit it out of the park. Thanks!
I can’t believe Ratshag posted here, worlds are colliding!