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Comment by monero-xmr | Hacker News Reader

The goal should not be to make grandmas bundle up and be cold in their houses. That’s a reduction in standard of living. We need to decrease the cost of energy while making more of it. Cheering that less energy was used is like cheering that we went backwards in human development - some people wish we go back to living in huts, but I’m not one of them.

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Less energy use doesn't have to mean "grandmas bundle up and be cold in their houses". There's many levels of in-between that and current usage.

On the contrary, maybe it's time to acknowledge that some economies may have over-extended in their promises about what standards of living we can come to expect.

Rich western countries still depend heavily on other parts of the world being cheap. The last 100 years were the result of the riches extracted from previous centuries of plunder and occupation, and the rush to modernize after the largest government spending projects in history (WWs I and II) induced an unsustainable march toward technological "progress" that could not continue without some later shock and consequent regression due to the inevitabilities (some refer to them merely as externalities) borne of dependence on finite resources. We are currently living through that shock.

No, that's the nocive and ridiculous ideology that is destroying Europe.

The issues the continent has been facing are purely due to inept policy. There is no problem with producing enough low emission/zero emission energy to maintain living standards.

Now, globally living standards have to drastically increase to get rid of poverty. That means drastic increase in consumption as well. The problem that noone is keen to acknowledge is the global population level.

Hardly, we should be investing in nuclear power and renewable energy to become energy independent as a priority. And throwing everything we can at nuclear fusion research.

We can achieve energy that is "too cheap to meter".

Another way to say what you said is "we're not there yet" which is exactly what I'm saying.

So things like better insulation is a step backwards in development then?

That is efficiency gains. But merely cheering that less energy is generated is incorrect. Standard of living heavily correlated to total power generated. We should generate more energy, cleaner for sure, but having to bundle up is terrible. We should all be warm and comfortable - that is called “standard of living”.

Huh, what you're saying is like saying human's life standard can be expressed in food kilocalories intake..

In addition to your other replies, you can get more with less. Eg a heat pump versus a furnace.

Using more energy is a a pretty terrible goal.

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