A woman that I'd been seeing once pushed me through a plate glass window in a rage due to my political views that Republicans were mean and Democrats were incompetent, or the reverse, I wasn't sure which. Fortunately, religion never came up since I can be equally offensive on that subject - I have something to offend almost everyone.

That was some years ago, before eco-quarrelling.

Finding The One can be hard work at the best of times, but even more so when you want that special person to share a worldview that ultimately regards human beings as polluters, to be valued according to the size of their carbon footprints and their recycling track record. . .

Yesterday’s edition of The Times (London) reported on environmentally-friendly couples increasingly clashing over green issues, like whose turn it is to take the recycling out, whether it’s more ethical to have a bath or a shower, or how often to switch the lights on. Such issues are, apparently, causing heartache and bitterness for many couples today, and not just amongst us emotionally illiterate and repressed Brits. In the touchy-feely US, too, therapists and relationship counsellors are increasingly reporting eco-disputes as a factor in relationship breakdown and family feuds. . .

. . . when it comes to ‘eco-quarrelling’, the arguments can become particularly poisonous, because for green couples it is only ‘scientific proof’ that can settle disputes. But with the data around climate change so vague and fluctuating, it’s hard to know which partner can rightly claim the moral high ground. ‘We end up having to agree to disagree until one of us finds evidence’, says one British woman, whose fantastically cheerless husband wanted to put down the family dog because it was an ‘unproductive’ use of energy. . .

There has been some concern that the great eco-apocalypse narrative and shock tactics of green activists are causing stress and trauma to kids. Both in the UK and in the US, young children are apparently losing sleep worrying about climate change. But the general attitude amongst many activists is also that playing on this fear encourages action. Indeed, the current UK government advertising campaign for Act on CO2 depicts a parent telling a bedtime story to his young daughter about the Climate Change Monster. (This is an odd message when you think about it, as surely one of the hallmarks of being a proper grown-up is knowing that monsters don’t exist? So is the ad trying to say that climate change is nothing really to worry about?)

More than just providing an insight into the lives of the unbearably tedious, the reports of ‘eco-quarrels’ between couples reveal not so much that environmentalism should be taken seriously as a political movement, but rather how essentially frivolous it is. After all, if you honestly felt that your fellow human beings were causing the imminent destruction of all human and natural life, would you really countenance sharing your life or bed with another person?

The bar-room romantic in me is inclined to believe that there are no political differences that can’t be transcended by love. But it seems to me more likely that the act of loving another human being offers us the possibility, even momentarily, of transcending our neuroses, hang-ups and concerns with the ephemera of life which do not really matter. Self-disgust, ultimately, is self-obsession: which does not sit readily with obsessing over someone else.

As noted in the article, there's nothing novel about such quarreling. If it isn't about one thing, it's about another. And, it's a sure sign that no one really cares about such things when they degenerate to this level. There's no attitude of investigation, experiment, learning or grounded improvement. It's about belief rather than knowledge. They don't care enough to think clearly. Indoctrinating children with such beliefs is often considered to be child abuse, and is certainly destructive to families and society as a whole. But then, that's the true objective. These silly wankers seem to think that something good will arise from the chaos of a shattered society, though we have already done those experiments and found them to be nonsensical.