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Yes, the claim is that living in a warmer climate and using A/C to cool 10-20 degrees in the summer is more energy efficient than living in a cold one and heati
by cfmcdonald 7y ago
Yes, the claim is that living in a warmer climate and using A/C to cool 10-20 degrees in the summer is more energy efficient than living in a cold one and heating by 40-50 degrees in the winter.
- rdiddly 7y agoSimilarly, my murdering my neighbor is OK because it's so many fewer murders than ISIS commits.
- noobermin 7y agoSomething about this seems wrong...like this is a very poor argument to even make.
- asdfasgasdgasdg 7y agoI wouldn't say so. There is a spectrum of eco-friendliness. Not existing is probably on the high end of eco-friendliness, although someday perhaps an Elon Musk of fixing the environment will be born who will have a net positive impact. Then there are people who travel around the world via airplanes who will probably go to eco-hell. If you're alive and living in a first world country, you have some amount of detrimental effect on the environment. So it is sensible to compare relative levels of harmfulness.
- noobermin 7y agoWhich is my point. This is like the arguments around cars. Cars and the design of cities that requires people to drive to do anything are one of the larger contributors to ghg's in the US, but we can't expect people in those cities to essentially die tomorrow in order to fix things. This argument that blames people who essentially live in cooler areas seems even worse, you're blaming things outside their control. You can change street design and work on public transit because those are things we built. You can't change where people live without displacing them. Just like you said, not existing would save the environment too, like bulldozing every spawling suburb and exhurb in the US would save a lot on GHG but it would be pretty cruel.
- thaumasiotes 7y ago...why?
- tracer4201 7y agoWhy? I don’t have depth in the specifics, but what’s the critical issue with the argument?
- majewsky 7y agoFalse dichotomy. It's missing the third option of living in a warm climate, but using more energy-efficient architecture to cool homes.
- Gibbon1 7y agoA good point someone made, we replace about 1% of our housing stock a year. And build 2-3% more. At that rate the effect of passive house regulations won't have any effect on CO2 emissions over the next 20-30 years. So you aren't going to fix anything with expensive passive houses. Especially since passive houses need major repairs every 10-20 years. What's needed to to ban gas and oil fired furnaces and make the grid 100% renewable. Everything else is a distraction.
- lgats 7y agoCurrently, in the Midwest US, you'll pay around 3-5x more per month for heating in the winter using forced air electric vs gas. A reasonable winter gas bill of $150/month would easily push $400/month using electric.
- DocTomoe 7y agoOf course, most energy efficient would be to live in a warmer climate and just live with the warmth, or live in a colder climate and dress appropriately, as mankind has for ages.
- titanomachy 7y agoPeople have also been using fire to stay alive in cold places since long before the start of history.
- inawarminister 7y agoWood fire is environmentally friendly as long as you use replanted forests, right?