The ecosexual’s case against long distance relationships

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I know plenty of people who have online loves and remote lovers, but is it a sustainable model? I don’t mean in the long-term love sense, or the hot sex forever sense — in the *green* sense. Slate doesn’t think so. Snip, sans external links:

You’re sitting in the airport terminal, rolling your copy of the Economist into a sweaty tube and waiting to see a significant other who lives far away. You’re excited. You’re aroused. But there’s something else, a nagging feeling that gurgles in your stomach and won’t go away. Is it pangs of guilt? It should be: The planet is about to suffer for your love.

Perversely, we live in a world where the sustainability consultant in San Francisco is willing to fly in an exotic boyfriend every month from Washington, D.C. All day, she helps companies “green their supply chains” and “internalize core social costs,” yet that eco-savvy seems to vanish at night, when she e-mails: Come visit!!! You might say she’s willing to be a locavore but not a locasexual.

Consider what happens when these two fly to see each other once a month. Since greenhouse gases emitted from high-altitude airplanes are thought to have several times the impact of ground transport, a carbon offset company would pin their romantic travels with the equivalent of 35 metric tons of CO2 each year. If that responsibility were divided evenly between the two, our sustainability consultant’s lifestyle would be about six times worse for the environment than that of the average gas-guzzling American—and up to 10 times worse than that of the average San Franciscan. (Indeed, for her, breaking up would be about 10 times better for the environment than going vegetarian.)

(…) A robust Date Local movement wouldn’t just help the environment. Like other forms of economic localization, the decision to swear off Orbitz romance creates important spinoff benefits. For one, it makes people less anti-social. By spending all their free time out of town or staring at a webcam—that is, in their apartments or airline cabins, rather than in parks, bowling alleys, and pubs—long-distance lovers erode civic commitment and social support networks. They have fewer chances to meet new people. And they make their cities more stratified by inflating an über-class bubble of jet-set shut-ins who are—understandably, given their lifestyle—more worried about conditions at O’Hare than things going on outside their front door.

What’s more, out-of-town daters have less sex than local couples—and long stretches of abstinence between visits could lead to negative health outcomes and thus higher health care costs. Distance also magnifies the impact of negative feelings like longing and suspicion; according to one study, intercity lovers are more likely to be depressed (PDF) and less likely to share resources or take care of each other when sick. And they spend money on travel that they might otherwise save and invest—leaving them vulnerable to economic shocks and wearing away their future standard of living. Every one of these demons could be banished by simply dating local. (…read more, slate.com)

* Footnote from a sex and word nerd: I really take issue with the wordsmithing of “locasexual”. I speak enough Spanish to get by in Spain and Mexico; this would come out as crazysexual. The word, IMHO, should be “localsexual”.