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Comment by notJim | Hacker News Reader

Consuming less is definitely a big part of climate plans I've seen. Consuming less doesn't have to mean a reduced standard of living. This article mentions heat pumps for example, which consume much less energy. Other plans I've seen also include supporting dense development (=consuming less land/resources for housing), supporting public transit (=consuming less energy for transportation), and upgrading efficiency in homes (=consuming less energy for housing). I think longer term, the cuts will have to be deeper due to population growth, but there is so much low-hanging fruit.

I think in general the environmental movement has been hurt by the association with austerity. Most people don't like being told their lives have to get worse for a benefit that's difficult to see. It needs to paint a positive vision of the future that people can get excited about.

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I think in general the environmental movement has been hurt by the association with austerity.

This exactly. Most people respond better to carrots than sticks. We can consume less energy and material and still live more, through innovation.

Consuming less does not fix the bulk of energy demand, and this particulates in air. It helps with the trash side of the problem mostly.

Traveling less would do more, or using more public transport. Bulk transit of non-food goods is very energy efficient, the last mile is not.

See website Without Hot Air as a rough but thorough analysis.

I think anyone supportive of consuming less is including less individual travel and proximity trade/consumption as a fundamental part of the decrease. Other popular issues nowadays seem to be meat consumption and human breeding, but the key importance of transportation seems to be still more generally acknowledged by everyone I know with an outspoken opinion on the matter or a corporate agenda.

Air conditioning as a luxury to rethink, OTOH, rarely if ever comes into discussion around here (I'm writing from a Mediterranean perspective, obviously AC can quickly become a necessity elsewhere).

Air conditioning will become much less of a luxury as the climate warms. Even in the past decade, summer temperatures high enough (especially indoors) to pose a health threat have become an increasingly regular occurrence in many parts of the world. Worse, some places are approaching the point where the confluence of air temperature, humidity, wind, and sun intensity will raise temperatures above the 35 degrees C wet bulb limit for human survival. In these conditions, air conditioning will not be a luxury but rather an essential life support system. Plans for climate-compatible energy use will need to take increasing needs for AC into account.

Sourcing: https://www.sciencenews.org/article/climate-deadly-extreme-t...

It actually costs way less energy to cool a house than it does to heat one so the net migration to the south from the US northeast has and will continue to actually lower US per capita use and as the US uses circa 24% of the worlds energy this will have an effect.

Counterintuitive though.

In dollar terms, heating is less than half the cost of cooling in my experience.

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