Waste Case
There’s a new study out that claims that single people are destroying the environment.
Yep. It’s true.
According to Dr. Jiango Liu of Michigan State University, the increase in the number of one-person households over the past decade is directly proportional to a corresponding decrease in our precious natural resources. Put simply, single people, by virtue of our singular existence, are wasteful. We use too much heat, take too many showers, and purchase too many single-serve Lean Cuisine frozen dinners in microwave-friendly plastic trays. All of this, Dr. Liu concludes, places you and me on the Axis of Ecological Evil right between Joe Camel and that drunk guy who totaled the Exxon Valdez.
In other words, I’m an environmental terrorist.
And my numbers are legion. There are hordes of us out there, wreaking our path of ecological carnage across the planet, although some people are clearly more conflicted than others about their role in the impending destruction of the Good Planet Earth. The Boston Globe, which broke the story, did attempt to provide its own brand of balanced coverage by including a small-print sidebar featuring a feeble protest from one guilt-ridden single.
“But I recycle! I walk to work! I buy organic!” squeaks Mr. Joseph Halloran, 34, of Beacon Hill. Mr. Halloran is anguished at the very notion that his 452 square feet of cockroach-infested studio space on Myrtle Street could be the epicenter of a global warming juggernaut that will someday decimate the entire universe.
Remind me later that I must track Mr. Halloran down, stuff him into his environmentally-friendly cloth grocer bag, and beat him about the head and neck until he comes to his senses.
Because I know. I know what’s really going on here. It’s just another battle cry in a lifelong war of attrition that I am slowly but surely losing.
I’ve held my ground as long as I could. I’ve withstood fear - ignoring dire warnings about herpes, AIDS, and that pesky biological time bomb that is my ever-shriveling uterus. I’ve resisted bribery - turning up my nose at the gargantuan tax breaks I’ll get if only I get married, stay home, file jointly, and start cranking out youngsters at the rate of one per year. But now they’ve moved on to guilt - the latest and most potent weapon yet in a vast crusade mounted by the Walt Disney Corporation, politicians of every ilk, crooked real estate developers, and Dr. John Gray to shame me into marrying up and procreating as quickly and prolifically as possible. All so they can peddle Interstellar Buzz Talking Action Figures to my children, buy my vote with secret tax cuts for soccer moms, seize the homes of widowed empty nesters, and sell a bazillion copies of Mars and Venus Save the Earth to panic-stricken singles like you and me.
Okay, so I’m not entirely sure about the John Gray part. I just snuck that in there because I think he is the Antichrist and I want you to think so too. And you will. But more on that later.
To address the environmental havoc wreaked upon our good planet by the Nefarious Single Scourge (i.e., me), Dr. Liu has proposed a solution befitting the spawn of any self-respecting Communist dictatorship. His solution? Shared space for singles! He calls it “co-housing.” I call it, “didn’t I do this in college until I got so grossed out by my anorexic roommate that I had to move into a single?” housing.
Now, I can’t speak for every single person on the planet, but something tells me that this particular solution is just not going to fly. I know that in my own case, when I come home, frazzled and depressed after a long day at the office, the last thing in the world I want to do is plop my tired ass down next to the kegger to watch my 56 year old roommate get her wrinkled old freak on with her octogenarian boyfriend one couch over, while some beer-swilling geriatric frat boy named Bluto pukes his dentures out onto the rug after one too many jello shots.
Yeah, yeah, I know. It’s all for a good cause. We’d be saving the environment, after all. For the children.
I’ll tell you what, Dr. Liu. Here’s my counter proposition. When all of my happily married, dutifully procreating friends get together and trade in their Range Rovers and Lincoln Navigators for Segways and tandem bikes; when they stop super-sizing their Happy Meals and start recycling down to the last Pudding Pop stick; and when they launder each and every cloth diaper by hand in Tom’s of Maine Natural Laundry Soap and then strap them onto the little ’uns with handmade hemp twine, then I might - might - think about getting a roommate.
Until then, Doctor, you can kiss my wasteful single ass.
4:47:31 PM 
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