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Comment by AstralStorm | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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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