Hacker News Reader

Comment by dalore | Hacker News Reader

It doesn't make sense to have AC preparedness when it's only used for 1 week out of a year.

Also the environmental impact of everyone having an AC, that's not good.

In France and the UK hardly any has an AC because it's not really needed. Your suggestion is that they spend billions of dollars for this? Who buys everyone the AC?

I lived in PNG which is near the equator and hot. It's not the temperature that's the true problem, but humidity. We stayed cool by using the fan, resting, removing clothing, swimming.

View on HN

By that logic, it doesn’t make sense to fit a building with a sprinkler system when it’s only used for one hour out of a century.

The question should be whether AC would be used much, but whether it has a net benefit. And yes, the environmental impact should be taken into account.

To me, that depends (a.o.) on whether those 1,500 excess deaths get ‘compensated’ by lower death rates just after the heat wave (which would mean many of those who died lost ‘only’ a few weeks)

Many areas around the world have storm shelters or bomb shelters.

Perhaps laws requiring community centers also function as temperature extreme shelters could be instated.

The laws would have to also provide funding to install and maintain AC and Heating systems suitable for the population around that area.

Additionally, if a business doesn't have AC or heating during extreme temperature alerts, it should close for the safety of the workers.

It seems increasingly needed now, and is one of many profit externalities to the fossil fuel companies costing everybody else money. The fairest, and market leveraging way would be to make them pay for this.

Shell and EXON buying everyone in France an AC unit so everyone can keep driving cars around is one of the most dystopian ideas I have considered in some time.

If you phrase it as "fossil fuel companies should pay large amounts in taxes and the government should use those taxes to help mitigate the effects of climate change" it changes from dystopian to socialism without missing a beat.

It's not even to keep people driving cars. It's just the new normal. Even if we stopped driving today we're still going to bake Paris in the summer. The damage is already done. Think of it more like a fine for destroying the environment.

A more reasonable shortish term solution is to air condition large communal buildings and allow people to camp out overnight when the temperatures become inhospitable.

Why are cars relevant here? Weren't most of the people who died from this elderly anyway, less likely to be driving?

I think the most dystopian idea would be Exxon not paying for their crimes against humanity, but rather allowed to continue lying to the public about climate change, lobbying governments to reduce their penalties.

> It doesn't make sense to have AC preparedness when it's only used for 1 week out of a year.

If that one week a year can kill people, still think it doesn't make sense?

Air conditioning is better for the environment than heating - if the alternative is living somewhere with cooler summers and colder winters, AC saves energy.

Does it make sense for residents in area where hurricanes occur to keep a generator in their garage?

> In France and the UK hardly any has an AC because it's not really needed

Thousands of people just died. It is clearly needed.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com