Reminder that the US use more electricity for its domestic-use AC than the entire African continent for its global energy consumption.
Source: https://e360.yale.edu/features/cooling_a_warming_planet_a_gl...
Source: https://e360.yale.edu/features/cooling_a_warming_planet_a_gl...
If, for example only, this was a significant contributor to global warming and impending doom, does it matter that our first world comforts are to blame? We don't get special exception just because we're used to a certain standard of living.
I desperately hope we don't need to abandon first world comforts. And i really doubt we would need to. However if, for sake of argument, that was the only solution - our answer should be to acknowledge the burden and take action.
This is all for sake of illustration though. Just that your comment seemed to imply because our first world comforts use more energy that it was somehow unfair to question the impact of said comforts.
But if murder is the only solution, you'd have to murder 10 Nigerians to save the same power consumption as an American; you'd do a lot less murder by focussing your attention.
Just some of them might be interesting, others not, this one certainly count as interesting to me.
Where such a comparison does become intensely valuable is when the EU says things like "we will do whatever it takes" in relation to energy and food. The implication there is "we will out-bid anyone" and "anyone" happens to be Africa and much of Asia. That's quite a horrendous way of using your currency to export the famine and freezing that you deserve to people who had no say in your bad policy decisions.
(Or if in some corner of the US renewables production is reduced before fossil sources when load lightens, that's even a bigger wrong)
What if this said, "Reminder that the US use more electricity for its domestic-use TV than the entire African continent."
Electricity consumption is an indicator of economic success. FWIW, I own neither AC nor TV.
>Air conditioners use about 6% of all the electricity produced in the United States, at an annual cost of about $29 billion to homeowners.
The distribution of resources is grossly unequal.
It doesn’t make me feel bad and doesn’t strike me like it was meant to. My thought was “whoa, fascinating” and then I moved on with my morning.
Maybe the “feel bad” stuff is a you thing that your projecting out onto somebody else’s words?
Why isn't the goal to provide Africa with the opportunities to generate and consume as much energy as I can?
The American way of life is not sustainable. Even among developed countries the US is an outlier in terms of their use of resources and energy.
So far tech has enabled us to keep up. Why can't it continue?
We have plenty of sun that hits the desert of the country to power 10x our current energey usage. We have plenty of places to put nukes. Lots of land for wind.
But in terms of resources it is simply not possible. If every human being consumed as many resources as an average American then the planet would go up in smoke in 6 months. That's not really an opinion, these are the numbers.
Of course, all things are not equal between the US and Africa, so the comparison isn't worth mentioning.