i see theres actually discourse on this. Lemme lay it out then.
Yes your all right AC use can be mitigated by proper building techniques. it does cause lots of emissions. its also necessary for many people and places regardless. Its also way over used in western society.
None of that matters. The specifics of when to use or not use AC arent relevant right now because under capitalism your never gonna get houses built better en masse, and the only thing thats gonna be considered is how can we build houses even cheaper to make more profit and sell more AC units?
This is a discussion we can have all day and its never gonna matter.
The only thing worth discussing here is the fact that currently the powers that be want to sell you a home that needs AC and has AC and then shame you for using the damn thing.
The house in renting has shared spaces upstairs and living quarters downstairs and gd vaulted ceilings and the asshole never who designed it never considered putting some kind of venting in the ceiling upstairs to just suck the hot air out. I don’t even understand it, it’s just so efficient, but maybe I’m underestimating how bad leaks can form from that kind of venting
If you could get enough Americans to stop using air conditioning to make a difference, you might as well harness your incredibly powerful social movement to skip ahead and build a global electricity grid with enough solar to power AC for all
You all know that air conditioning is a crucial accessibility issue, right? Many chronic illnesses/disabilities cause heat intolerance. While we should be working on finding greener solutions, telling people to cut out air conditioning from their lives can slide into ableist territory real fast.
I refuse to believe people can keep writing and believe this fucking stupid blame shifting shit. Every fucking time things get worse the bottom rung is encouraged to tighten their belts while major corporate polluters and energy hogs go unregulated.
What would be good for the environment? The author is almost there. We need to spend more time outside (building scaffolds)
I’m with you on this. “Stop using AC, adapt to climate change!”
Meanwhile the US air force is flying 10000 planes a day for no fucking reason.
Meanwhile air travel is the only practical way to travel in this country. A mode of travel which is unlikely to ever be electrified on any meaningful scale — not to mention the amount of battery waste that would require.
China’s basically solved this problem already with high-speed rail. It doesn’t need batteries because the power is delivered to the track. Far more sustainable.
High speed rail would make sense in the US, too. Like everything between Montana, Texas, and Kentucky is flat. You could build rail lines that are perfectly straight with nothing in the way you’d have to make a turn to go around (causing you to slow down). Such a line could probably hit 300 mph. If the line was fron LA to NYC, it could make that trip in about 9 hours (probably not because eventually you have to go around the Rockies, Appalachia, and Sierra Nevada).
But no. Let’s continue using shitty tubes passengers get crammed into where we limit how much stuff they can bring and can’t leave their seat except to go to the bathroom.
Anyone who thinks that air conditioning is a “luxury” is forgetting that high temperatures literally kill people. The idea that hundreds of millions of people in the Global South do not have access to adequate cooling does not mean that air conditioning is a bourgeois luxury, it’s a health hazard and an indication of the disproportionate burden of the effects of climate change. This is why China builds power generators for Global South countries. Also summer temperatures across the world regularly rise above 100 F in many places, I’d like you all to tell my grandparents in Wuhan that they’re killing the planet by having air conditioning on.
