I didn't notice that. I kept temperature at usual 24.5 degrees. I have a heat pump and a solar pv though.
Unrelated: Does your solar pv really do anything for your heatpump? What's your kwh/kwp for december-february? I don't think it'll be anywhere close to the heatpump consumtion.
> I couldn't live with that temperature in winter, where I am wearing thick pullovers and jeans.
Are you really wearing those indoors?
However, I find it SUPER SAD that... in developed countries people are living less comfortably during the winter than the middle class in Romania, a developing country.
It makes no sense. In Romania, everyone who's at least middle class sets the thermostat to 22-23 degrees and basically only wears t-shirts and shorts indoors.
So a German making €40k net per year lives worse from this point of view compared to a Romanian making €20k net per year.
In the US, and I assume elsewhere, the single greatest reduction is carbon emissions was achieved by switching from coal plants to natural gas plants. Thats a win in my book. No fossil fuels at any cost is a losing proposition. Incremental progress to sustainable energy is how we get to sustainability.
But I don't see them as the end goal; that's still 100% renewable to me.
But for the short term, I think that's preferable to the much bigger disaster of global warming and climate change.
I'd happily wear a jacket, if that can help with shutting down a coal power plant
Apart from that, Romania's energy consumption comes 75% from coal, oil and gas. THAT is something that does not makes sense and something that is SUPER SAD. And to walk around in shorts and t-shirt in the winter when you are heating with those sources is just plain stupid.
It's unfortunately these kind of attitudes which will make it hard to reduce climate change.
2. That's just dumb. Romania reduced its energy usage a ton since 1989 plus its per capita usage is super low, if someone needs to look in the mirror it's the US, Australia, Canada, Germany, China (China for the industrial pollution primarily), etc.
I even doubt that anything would change if everyone in the developed world switches to this extreme economy. E.g. Russia burns coal and wastes hundreds of gigawatt hours to heat the atmosphere because of how their heating systems are designed. But of course it's lot easier to force me, a person who works from home, drives a hybrid car with 52MPG on average (and I rarely do more than a couple of hundreds km per month), travels couple of times per year and who installed a heat pump and a solar PV, to live with 19 degrees than to deal with Russia. It's equally easier to force me going full vegan instead of applying seemingly working solutions to reduce meat industry emissions (toilet training, seaweed diet, artificial meat in the end).
For the same reason that if you had two jobs with the exact same conditions, but one paid twice as much as the other, you would probably pick the one that pays more. Efficiency matters. Resources are limited. Oil is a resource. The capacity to take care of offenders is another.
The first thing when I come home is to change out of jeans and co and into more comfortable clothes.
There are few clothes more comfortable than a t-shirt and shorts.
In my country, we say that the bedroom should not be warmer than 19, because that's bad for sleeping :-). So it's really a choice. If I go to bed and the temperature is 24.5, I open the window.
Also I don't find it less comfortable to wear more clothes in the winter than in the summer. Ok, working from home on a computer at 19 degrees is a little bit cold, so I tend to use a warm water bottle. But honestly that's really fine.
Anyways I'm happy enough with my bills, even winter bills.
Put on a jumper. Or even, let your body adjust. There's plenty of evidence that keeping your body working to stay warm when you are healthy is very good forblood sugar control, which has additional benefits.
My house is extremely well insulated (BER A2), dunno if it qualifies as a passivhouse.
Also I'm exporting more than a megawatt per year back to grid for free, so you (as a society) may be happy.
So, I don't think I'm being unethical.
Do you take into account the energy needed to grow and transport the food you eat? To extract the material needed for objects you own? To build your car? To maintain the roads you use? I guess you obviously don't use fossil fuels at all and instead rely exclusively on the clean energy you produce?
Because if you don't, then you are still overall a consumer of energy.
But even if you were a net producer of clean energy, we as a society have a big problem of consuming too much overall. We will have to reduce that at some point (whether we want it or not). So it would be great if people started thinking about not eating meat for every meal, taking a plane every second week-end, and living in a sauna.
We as a society need to consume less energy (because we depend on fossil fuels that emit CO2), and anyway we will have less energy in the future (because... peak production of fossil fuels).
There is no price on that: we need to do less with less.
At this point I see zero reasons to conserve damn solar energy while half of the country still uses OFCH.
One way is to say "well I don't care, I won't do anything until I don't get a choice, and probably at that point it will hurt a lot".
Another is to face it, start doing things, and pushing your politicians to enforce very big plans. One problem I see is that everyone says "I would be ready to do a lot more if I knew everyone else did", but when it's time to vote, they don't.
Not being ready to go lower than 24.5 degrees (doesn't have to be 19 if that's not bearable for you) in winter does not sound like you are ready to do much, though.
As I said before, I'm living in a house insulated up to the highest standard, I have a heat pump and a solar PV, the largest PV array in the estate. I think this is something reasonable. I work remotely, I don't drive much and I drive with very good MPG, I've figured out that my car has the best MPG at 90 kmph so I drive about 90 kmph, I don't travel often, I'm carefully sorting my waste (most people throw everything into the black bin), I'm trying to buy things which last and I'm trying to repair and sell, I think if everyone does that it would make some reasonable impact.
Though I don't think that 19 or whatever degrees is something of your business.
> you are ready to do much
I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.
> I'm not ready to do unreasonable (or idiotic) things. Why 24.5? Because I've figured out that it's the most optimal temperature for me.
Let's say that your case is extremely special and for you it does not make sense to not overheat, it does not make it unreasonable (or idiotic) to say that the vast majority of people should not overheat, does it?