population

i'm reading through ehrlich and ehrlich 's 2004 gem, one with nineveh, right now. i'm familiar with a lot of the things that they've covered before (in general laying out the extent of the problems associated with the growth [population and consumption] of the human enterprise). one new idea i just picked up though is that of the changing household dynamics—namely, smaller people per household combined with larger households (at least in the US). this leads to less large things—think white goods, stoves, fridges, washing machines—being shared and in the end more sprawl.

i think it would be interesting to investigate the extent to which the ideas of freedom and self-sufficiency combined with a skepticism of non-traditional relationship types and living situations combine to increase per capita use of ecosystem services. doubly interesting would be looking into how the media perpetuates the negative stereotypes of group living situations.