Now, I have spent a lifetime in various desserts and doing punishing manual labor outside in 100-110 degree heat. I remove the AC from almost every car I’ve ever owned and I’ve only ever used it for passengers when I didn’t have it- usually female ones for their comfort. I’ve never used AC in any of my homes.
That said- nah. If you’re somewhere hot and humid you can’t “run it a few hours.” Especially older homes and systems. With the AC full blast all day AND portable AC units in key rooms my sisters house a few weeks ago was 90f inside.
More modern and efficient homes might be able to make do, but if you don’t have good insulation and design you basically either run it all day or don’t bother running it at all.
Of course the elderly and very young as well as some people with medical conditions like heat rash don’t have a lot of choice as the heat can be extra dangerous or unpleasant for them.
But I’m with you in principle that not running AC unnecessarily is something almost anyone can do.
By the same token is is generally much easier to get warm in the cold then get cool.
I have an old-ass house with shitty insulation, but I still only have the aircon on for a few hours at a time max.
I live in Australia, I know what a 40C day is like
Like I said, I have never had or used AC in my homes and I have only ever owned 3 cars that had it and I didn’t remove it. So to each their own. You know what it is like for you- the fact it isn’t a problem for you automatically means you obviously haven’t encountered a situation where you had need or a strong enough feeling of need to operate your AC for more than a few hours a day.
I have long qualified for a handicapped parking placard, but I do not have one. I Park in regular Spaces and walk. I feel perfectly able to.
Were I to see someone in my same or similar condition who did use one, it wouldn’t make much sense to admonish them and tell them that if I can walk they can. How do I know what they can handle? Our circumstances may be similar or the same, but not identical. And we are not identical. So I don’t disagree in that I find AC wasteful and overused, but I do disagree in that I can’t dictate to everyone else what their tolerances or needs or perceptions or
circumstances are.
Of course I favor some sort of prohibitively complex and difficult to quantify system of “points” where in regardless of wealth all people are allocated points. Each action of impact has a points value. Drive a 7 person suv alone or roll coal of you want- but that will leave you few points for plastic straws or AC or steal dinners. Leave the lights on, fill your pool, water your lawn. It’s a numbers game. As the global population increases and the standard of living does, the total resources can’t keep up and still be allocated in the same amount to each person. We need less people or less use of resources, but if 7 billion people all throw one piece of small trash on the ground, it’s still a big problem. Our individual impact is magnified by sheer numbers.
So instead of a focus on “having it all,” I favor a general cultural, social, and if necessary, legal compulsion to prioritize. Go travel the world and release massive pollution from your transportation and such for no good reason except self indulgence and “experience” that dies with you and leaves no tangible trace for the future. Be selfish, globe trotters. But when you get home you’ll have a lot of days without heat or AC, a lot of walking and bicycling vs. Driving, because you’ve used up a lot of points. That’s sort of the rough outline anyway. No idea how to actually implement or score it- but I like the idea. Choose what matters to you and narrow our scope on what we have and do.
We mainly need less rich corporate bastards that fly multiple times a day, and large factories that get away with violating regulations by simply paying a relatively small fine.
Yesterday afternoon in TX, the air temp was 43C (109F) with a 49C (121F) heat index. I have insulated my parents 49 year old house triple thickness in attic, replaced windows, metal roof, covered roof with sun shade fabric and set AC to 78F (25.5C) and it still runs 10 min every 15 min in the heat. If off an hour, house heats above 95F. OPs obvious lack of understanding thermodynamics offends my engineering brain. Come visit me in September, temps down to mid 90s (35C) but humidity at +60%.. THEN tell me to turn it off.
@catfluff- agreed. The problems start when we realize that almost all of us are rich bastards though. Perhaps not rich corporate bastards, and perhaps we don’t feel rich, but the general citizens of several developed countries, even those seeing themselves as struggling or poor, comprise the 1% of the global elite in population in terms of wealth and material quality of life.
Less than 20% of the worlds population will ever set foot on an airplane and take flight. Contrast that to 90% of Americans who have flown or will fly in their lifetimes.
A very small percentage of the global population consumes a majority of the worlds resources, and while among us the rich corporate bastards and such are the lions share. Of course- as far as industry goes that is largely to feed our appetites. They don’t run giant factories to make things that people don’t buy- or not for long generally.
I won’t go on a tangent of consumerism and how yes, often they make products etc. and then create the need or desire for them versus making them based off demand- but either way you slice it, the critical link in that chain is you and I and our peers who are feeding and training the beast. Capitalism gets a lot of hate because capitalism is a mirror and shows us ourselves, and many do not like what we see.
So on the one hand it is convenient to pin it on the “elite,” most revolutions in history have overthrown the rich bastards and replaced them with leaders who inevitably became rich bastards themselves or already were rich bastards- or at least bastards without the money to be the assholes that their nature intended them to be.
But by the same token it is in theory far easier to regulate the actions or change the social values of the small groups that have the most control over these things and the utmost wealth than it is to regulate or “enlighten” several billion people as individuals to act thoughtfully.
So it is largely prudent to tackle those “elite” few and move down the chain from there.
While examinations of ideas like wealth distribution and such show is that there is little of any practical per person benefit to targeting the wealthy- it is true that a single factory can produce more environmental impact or pollution in a day than some people will in a lifetime.
It is also true that merely removing a single cross continental flight can offset the pollution of quite a few people. One transatlantic flight for one person can easily be greater than or equal to all their other polluting behaviors in an average year.
For frame of reference a traditional ship- not some ultra efficient modern “green ship” or some nuclear powered thing or sail boat- can undertake the same journey and the flight will pollute 20x more and carry less people.
So while industry and the mega wealthy are prime targets and should be focused on, this ain’t a case where the “average” citizen of a developed nation is small potatoes. If we look at a single snapshot of Americans- where 90% will fly at least once, that’s almost 300 million years worth of individual pollution added to the environment for what is largely non essential travel. And of course many Americans travel for business and pleasure frequently.
So indeed- focusing on gross polluters over the sorts of often silly or even counter productive (to the agenda of environmental benefit, not to the agendas behind such initiatives) things we often do is not prudent.
But people don’t like change in general and don’t like to give things up.
So they try to find changes that on an individual and systemic level will produce the least “pinch” or disruption. The spice must flow, the rich bastards want their billions and the upper middle class bastards want their millions and all the other bastards want distractions and comforts and all of them all the time.
AC can be a comfort but for many- especially the elderly or those at risk- heat can kill, so it can also be a necessity. Those who can do without certain things likely should. That said- bastards are very bad at distinguishing want from need.
That said- nah. If you’re somewhere hot and humid you can’t “run it a few hours.” Especially older homes and systems. With the AC full blast all day AND portable AC units in key rooms my sisters house a few weeks ago was 90f inside.
More modern and efficient homes might be able to make do, but if you don’t have good insulation and design you basically either run it all day or don’t bother running it at all.
But I’m with you in principle that not running AC unnecessarily is something almost anyone can do.
By the same token is is generally much easier to get warm in the cold then get cool.
I live in Australia, I know what a 40C day is like
I have long qualified for a handicapped parking placard, but I do not have one. I Park in regular Spaces and walk. I feel perfectly able to.
Were I to see someone in my same or similar condition who did use one, it wouldn’t make much sense to admonish them and tell them that if I can walk they can. How do I know what they can handle? Our circumstances may be similar or the same, but not identical. And we are not identical. So I don’t disagree in that I find AC wasteful and overused, but I do disagree in that I can’t dictate to everyone else what their tolerances or needs or perceptions or
Of course I favor some sort of prohibitively complex and difficult to quantify system of “points” where in regardless of wealth all people are allocated points. Each action of impact has a points value. Drive a 7 person suv alone or roll coal of you want- but that will leave you few points for plastic straws or AC or steal dinners. Leave the lights on, fill your pool, water your lawn. It’s a numbers game. As the global population increases and the standard of living does, the total resources can’t keep up and still be allocated in the same amount to each person. We need less people or less use of resources, but if 7 billion people all throw one piece of small trash on the ground, it’s still a big problem. Our individual impact is magnified by sheer numbers.
Less than 20% of the worlds population will ever set foot on an airplane and take flight. Contrast that to 90% of Americans who have flown or will fly in their lifetimes.
A very small percentage of the global population consumes a majority of the worlds resources, and while among us the rich corporate bastards and such are the lions share. Of course- as far as industry goes that is largely to feed our appetites. They don’t run giant factories to make things that people don’t buy- or not for long generally.
So on the one hand it is convenient to pin it on the “elite,” most revolutions in history have overthrown the rich bastards and replaced them with leaders who inevitably became rich bastards themselves or already were rich bastards- or at least bastards without the money to be the assholes that their nature intended them to be.
So it is largely prudent to tackle those “elite” few and move down the chain from there.
While examinations of ideas like wealth distribution and such show is that there is little of any practical per person benefit to targeting the wealthy- it is true that a single factory can produce more environmental impact or pollution in a day than some people will in a lifetime.
It is also true that merely removing a single cross continental flight can offset the pollution of quite a few people. One transatlantic flight for one person can easily be greater than or equal to all their other polluting behaviors in an average year.
So while industry and the mega wealthy are prime targets and should be focused on, this ain’t a case where the “average” citizen of a developed nation is small potatoes. If we look at a single snapshot of Americans- where 90% will fly at least once, that’s almost 300 million years worth of individual pollution added to the environment for what is largely non essential travel. And of course many Americans travel for business and pleasure frequently.
But people don’t like change in general and don’t like to give things up.
So they try to find changes that on an individual and systemic level will produce the least “pinch” or disruption. The spice must flow, the rich bastards want their billions and the upper middle class bastards want their millions and all the other bastards want distractions and comforts and all of them all the time.
AC can be a comfort but for many- especially the elderly or those at risk- heat can kill, so it can also be a necessity. Those who can do without certain things likely should. That said- bastards are very bad at distinguishing want from need.