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Comment by ced | Hacker News Reader

Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly

Is there any part of the article that supports the claim of the title? Did I miss it?

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.

Something about this seems wrong...like this is a very poor argument to even make.

Why? I don’t have depth in the specifics, but what’s the critical issue with the argument?

False dichotomy. It's missing the third option of living in a warm climate, but using more energy-efficient architecture to cool homes.

A 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.

Currently, 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.

...why?

I 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.

Which 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.

Of 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.

People have also been using fire to stay alive in cold places since long before the start of history.

Wood fire is environmentally friendly as long as you use replanted forests, right?

I was going to be snarky but I read the article and the linked articles about how AC is eco friendly and there is nothing I can see that showecases that fact. haha. WTF

It "supports" it with a tu quoque "whataboutism" argument, i.e. a fallacy.

That’s not whataboutism, because people have to live somewhere. Either you live where it’s cold and use energy to heat your home, or you live somewhere hot and use AC.

There are of course temperate areas that require neither, and they’re typically very expensive because they’re temperate.

Sure, but do Americans really need to cool down entire buildings by 10c+ ?

I lived in SF and LA, both my flats didn't have AC, I was perfectly fine. It's true that I actually had to bring extra cloth to my uni/office because it was insanely cold. I'm in Berlin now and I don't use a/c nor heating at all because buildings are properly insulated. I open the window during summer nights and throw in an extra blanket during winter.

You’re describing the temperate areas of America that are insanely expensive. You don’t need to cool a home in a coastal CA town, but you also need to cough up $3k+ a month to live there.

If you live in the south you absolutely want to cool your home by 10c, and it might be a requirement to not die.

> You’re describing the temperate areas of America

Yeah that was part of my point, these places really don't require much a/c yet in the summer they're on full blast.

That’s not been my experience in LA. Most buildings I visit are just ventilated to the outside.

Note: I don’t live in the valley.

It is precisely whataboutism, i.e. "What about Europe?" Well, we're not talking about Europe when we say "Americans' Air Conditioning Habit Is Eco-Friendly" are we? Maybe if they had titled it "Air Conditioning America is Cheaper Than Heating Europe" (to match what the article is saying) you could say I didn't have a case. That would be a more modest and defensible (yet still unimpressive) claim. I don't see that; "I see America's AC habit is eco-friendly because Europe."

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