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Your AC use is nothing compared to shops and malls running AC outside of work hours. Do not live in discomfort for nothing.

Buy an AC, get comfortable, and if this is a real issue to you, sit down and think long and hard about how best to affect the problem. You'll find better options than not running your AC.

(Edit: for perpective, most residential dwellings in Canada run heaters from november to march and AC from june to september. This is a big problem - your AC, your whole carbon footprint is less than a fraction of a percent of CO2 per year. This issue is systematic and will not be solved by voluntary simplicity

And about moving - where do you go? I'm happy where I am with hitting -30C to -40C in the winter, but we are having historical forest fires right now, first ever acutal tornado alert in my life and are hitting 30-35C multiple times a week, and trying to go higher North is only mining towns and fishing villages. Southern Hemisphere?)

I agree with you and the GP… individual responsibilities are frauds ( CF : recycling)

At the same time I live in New Orleans where house are wooden box without a inch of insulation.

It’s a vaste on a large scale to AC that city ( or the south at large, housing are as shitty in MS, AL and so on.

But I command GP to at least think about it.

I agree with him that paying the real cost of things would help our best friend the free market do it’s only job.

( carbon intensive goods and service should be priced at a large premium IMO )

I would also add : tax incentive to keep lodging energy efficient ( heat pump, insulation, yada yada )

Just to get a single data point from a canadien resident : what do you think of outlaws AC in malls and shop that do not keep the cold air inside?

The nordics still have winters that are filled with wet cold darkness and short summers that are wet and cold or just cold. Temperatures above 30c are mostly on a tuesday once a year on a sunny hillside.

I feel the same way about getting an AC and have held off until I also can get solar panels. Is that an option for you?

I am leaning more and more towards what you say, but on the other hand, I do really believe in doing my part and setting an example.

I really think that "after all I don't have much impact" is what's killing the planet. It's always somebody's else fault and no one takes responsibility or does anything.

My reasoning is that it's actually backwards.

So this is a systemic issue, where the people actually impacting the problem are at the top of compagnies, governement and international regulators. That's where any change can happen - any individual change has an effect that is either non perceptible ("setting an example for others" is impossible to measure) or measurably negligible (making your footprint smaller).

So things like recycling or running the AC less have nothing to do with the problem or the solution - we need to affect the system itself, and to do that we have to go through companies, governement and international regulation.

Issue is that virtually no one is trying to do that. Few people try to impact local governement, fewer national or international entities.

I think this is because the "energy" needed to think and find a way to have an impact is drained into all the individual action stuff.

Like a pressure cooker - individual action is the valve letting of enough steam so that nothing happens. Remove the valve - what happens?

You make a good point. What really irks me is that our so-called captains of industry are cynically extracting wealth from this system at rates that are indecent while at the same time externalizing all of the problems first on the 'regular people' and then on a larger scale on the developing part of the world, who are utterly without a chance at dealing with this.

Big industry is one of the major root causes of all of this and even if individual choice is a factor I'm pretty sure that if just 500 people would stop lining their pockets for a couple of decades and instead really took our global interests to heart that we might be able to put a dent in this. But as it is I'm not very hopeful that that will ever happen. In fact they'll probably use the crisis to further increase the wealth gap.

> Your AC use is nothing compared to shops and malls running AC outside of work hours. Do not live in discomfort for nothing.

It's important to understand where the biggest offenses are and keep things in perspective, but this shouldn't absolve one of all personal responsibility either.

As individuals, pretty much the only ways we can influence the world for the better are going to be small by definition, and it makes sense to be considerate of which levers we do decide to pull.

> Southern Hemisphere?

Tasmania will fare well (probably) and has hydroelectricity (and inbreeding (allegedly)).

New Zealand has geothermal, two islands to choose from, but is getting over run with hollyweird seppo's looking for Middle Earth. At least Sam Neill is a (recent) native New Zealander.

As a Canadian you're welcome in either although you may get tired of explaining your accent isn't from (central northern) America.

To add to this argument, I'd suggest framing it in terms of harm reduction too.

To illustrate, we know that a bullet proof way to make a person's carbon footprint zero is for them to die. But no one would ever advocate this for obvious reasons.

So lowering carbon footprint should not be the only goal. One should be reducing the harm done.

There's a study in Japan showing that people avoid using heating due to inflation and more people die from stroke for example because of this. I.e. discomfort is not just a feeling, it can have harmful consequence.

The percentage of electricity produced with gas in Italy is ~63/64% (Terna data, 2022).

The other obvious solution would be to place a bunch of solar (PV) panels on the roof. These are 50% deducible in your taxes in the next 10 years. You can do that also in condo. The upside is that by design the excess energy is sold to the local network, powering other apartments/houses locally. You can also join a solar community. You can also decide to buy only certified energy that comes from hydroelectric or pv or eolic (see for example Dolomiti's offers) and compensate CO2 produced by energy and/or gas at home with certificates (as well, Dolomiti's offers).

Our solar, since Jan 1st, has produced over 4 MWh of power, of which 1 was used by us and 3 were used by other apartments in the building (and we got paid for it, even if just a little).

Regarding floods, yes, it was bad. But many reasons are linked to anthropic (mis)use of the soil. You can (if you read Italian) read up a bunch of things written by the Wu Ming collective commenting the whole event.

I am considering emigration as well, but for other reasons.

> The percentage of electricity produced with gas in Italy is ~63/64% (Terna data, 2022).

I get the exact figure of my electricity mix generation in my bill, it's 90% in my case (Castelli Romani, Lazio, Servizio Elettrico Nazionale).

That is the figure of your mix and your provider. Terna provides data for all Italy. My provider, Dolomiti, is 100% renewable (hydro, in this case).

AC is much more energy efficient than heating. (Other than heat pump heating, which is not yet common worldwide.)

And yet I always hear people fret about the energy use of AC but not heating.

I think it's based in our naturalistic fallacy.

Heating all of Chicago to be bearable in the winter is seen as "natural" as humans have been heating our homes for millennia. But Las Vegas cooling it's interior spaces is seen as strange and unnatural. And yet, cooling a warm environment is better from an environmental point of view than warming a cold one.

People fret about heating too. The difference is that your dwelling usually comes with a system for heating but it doesn't come with an AC.

I think people who need AC in the summer are the same people who overheat their homes in winter.

> And yet, cooling a warm environment is better from an environmental point of view than warming a cold one.

Is this true? Why would it be better for the enviroment?

Because all cooling (air conditioning) works by moving heat from point A to point B.

Most heating works by directly generating heat, via electric resistance or burning a fuel source. (Heat pumps are the exception.)

More details here if you'd like to jump into more details:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/8/1/014...

> results indicate that climate control in Minneapolis is about 3.5 times as energy demanding as in Miami

Yes I also try to use as little heating as possible.

I don't think that comparing the two is fair though. It's very hard to not get sick in a house at 10 degrees Celsius. 40 degrees Celsius is an immense discomfort but won't get me sick.

Is it? My thought (note: high humidity area) is opposite. I can live in 10C room with proper winter clothing. I can't live 40C/60% room, I no longer have any cloths to remove.

> I'm resisting the urge to buy AC because I feel like AC makes the problem worse, not better.

It's just a heat pump, and fairly efficient all considered. And not nearly as damaging to the climate as the folks who live in cold places and use fossil fuels to heat their homes. I don't think I'd feel guilty about getting some relief, it's not unreasonable.

This is something I’ve been confused about. In common discourse, it seems that “heat pump” has positive associations with efficiency while “A/C” is associated with gluttony and waste. Aren’t they the same device? Why the difference?

The difference is mostly the setup. Most "A/C" I see are hung up on roofs and exposed directly to the sun. Kinda funny if you think about it. But the installation guys/company do not care. And most people have no idea that it's a heat-pump or how that thing works.

That must be a regional thing. In my area heat pumps and air conditioners are indistinguishable on the outside. They are usually installed behind or beside the house in an inconspicuous location, as close as reasonably possible to the corresponding interior coil and machinery.

My guess is that heating is perceived as a survival issue, and cooling is about comfort. Needs vs wants.

Isn't excessive heat is the leading cause of death in many areas?

Worldwide, ten to twenty times as many deaths are caused by excessive cold as are caused by excessive heat.

https://thebreakthrough.org/issues/energy/human-deaths-from-...

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Ex...

Unsurprisingly, this seems to be a matter of debate:

> In a 2014 interview in the Washington Post of University of Miami climatologist Larry Kalkstein, who has published numerous research papers on weather-related mortality, weighed in on the matter: “Comparing apples to apples, which would be to evaluate acute or short-term responses to weather, I would always give the nod to heat-related deaths. However, if you are considering the seasonal differences in daily mortality, rather than just the “spikes” that we find with acute deaths, I can see why one can argue that winter (or cold-related) mortality is greater.”

https://www.wunderground.com/cat6/Which-Kills-More-People-Ex...

Edit: I see we are citing the same article :)

Yes, but I also cited another one, which takes the more general approach of estimating excess deaths per year associated with cold vs. heat. That article comes up with a factor of about 10 (4.6 million excess deaths per year due to cold vs. 0.5 million due to heat).

Note that this article also discusses other factors, such as seasonal changes in death rates due to diseases--but it, unlike the one you referenced, correctly observes that temperature is a factor in such deaths. The fact that flu season is worst in winter is because temperatures are colder than optimal in winter. So the increased flu death rate in winter should at least partly be counted as an increased death rate due to cold. The excess deaths methodology takes these kinds of things into account.

In common usage, the term "A/C" refers to a kind of heat pump that only does cold, whereas "heat pump" means one that does both hot and cold.

A refrigerator also has a heat pump, but we just call them refrigerators.

Part of the problem is in temperate climates, if you have "A/C" you probably _also_ have a furnace. They might run on different fuels (electric vs. natural gas) so it makes it harder to get a ballpark estimate for the overall efficiency.

I see. So this comes from a temperate climate perspective, where it's historically been the case that everyone _needs_ heat but cooling is an optional luxury. This perspective would seem to need revisiting with a changing climate and in a global context.

Why does anyone make A/C’s rather than just make Heat Pumps that run in both directions? Is there a cost difference?

Heat pumps are about 1.3x up front cost, but 0.75x over the life of the unit. New construction therefore tends to prefer a/c, but some federal and state subsidies are kicking in soon to sweeten the deal.

In really cold climates (e.g. Minneapolis, Montreal) heat pumps often also need a supplemental furnace or fireplace because the heat differential inside vs. outside exceeds what the pump can handle. Depending on your fuel source, you still come out ahead, but not as much.

I should note that I'm not an expert by any means; my brother in law works in this field and he gave me a crash course a couple weeks ago. So I probably feel like I know it better than I actually do.

[1]: https://carbonswitch.com/heat-pump-vs-ac/

I am aware there is a cost premium up front but I am wondering if this is just due to the production scale of AC units versus heat pumps or if there is something fundamentally, non-trivially more expensive?

> In common usage, the term "A/C" refers to a kind of heat pump that only does cold, whereas "heat pump" means one that does both hot and cold.

Does it though? That seems to be some kind of subcultural jargon that matches neither common (which uses central heating and air conditioning for any central system that cools with a heat pump regardless of how it heats) nor industry usage. (My fairly nee system, marketed as A/C, has both a two-way heat pump and a gas furnace to back up the heat punp for heating.)

I think it is largely because people from colder climates understand the necessity of heating but think cooling is a luxury. They understand freezing risks, but might not have real appreciation of heat exhaustion or heat stroke.

Secondarily, many may lack the basic physics knowledge to think about both as heat transfer nor to recognize the most important parameters: temperature differential and isolation.

On the other hand, people may have some awareness of poor deployments of air conditioning into leaky and barely insulated structures in hot climates. These are indeed wasteful, but so would heating that structure if it were transplanted to a cold climate. But, it is the structure that is inefficient, rather than the heating or cooling method...

> I am seriously considering emigration as an answer to climate changes.

You and quite a few others. I know a doctor and some other people through him in the South of Italy and they're ready to pack it in because it's simply unmanageable. They're the lucky ones, with options and skills that are in high demand elsewhere.

Is it possible for you to deploy rooftop solar? I produce 100% of the energy my home uses. I don’t feel bad about using AC in the least. There are also opportunities for me to step it up in the future: electronic car, more in home efficiency, eliminating gas appliances I am also protected from rising energy prices. My energy costs cannot go up for the next 25 years. (And after 25 years I can replace the panels with higher efficiency ones and generate even more energy)

Also if you deploy a mini-split (heat pump) it’s extremely efficient and it can both cool in the summer and offset heating needs in the winter. Heat pumps are 400% efficient compared to gas heat because they move heat energy.

If you augment gas heat in the winter with a heat pump it can be 4x the efficiency. That’s a huge win for your climate impact.

Your life and comfort are important. Look to those first. Then say, “of the things available to me what can I do to help?” Counterintuitive as it may sound this can lead to both taking good care of yourself AND optimal practices that fight climate change.

For example one of the biggest things I can do to help is use my words. If I convince ten neighbors to deploy solar I 10x my positive impact. If I call my representative and say “make rooftop solar more cost-effective with net metering rules and installation credits” I potentially influence the rules that make tens of thousands of people more likely to go sustainable.

I once came up with a Stirling engine based AC, basically two Stirling motors, the larger one driven by the sun and the smaller one driven in reverse by the larger one. No electrical parts, very few moving parts. The good part: it automatically starts working as soon as the sun has enough power to create enough of a delta-t across the cylinders of the larger motor, you don't even need control circuitry.

I moved back to Poland from Italy in 2019 just to be blasted with a 36°C heatwave.

I didn't think Italian weather would follow me here.

Anyway I'm thinking about installing solar panels totalling 800W (maximum allowed without additional permits) on my balcony next season and powering a small AC unit off of that - I suppose it's fair, considering it will be running using renewable energy and only when it's actually needed.

> maximum allowed without additional permits

Why on earth would a government put up barriers to energy independence? Is this because the Polish grid is not stable enough to deal with a substantial fraction of power from renewables or to protect commercial interests?

Same in Slovakia. Max is 11kwt. Its because of taxes. Anything above 11 is not considered residential any more, and you have to pay taxes on electricity you make and sell to the grid.

11KW is fairly massive though, I'm at about that and I've had to beef up quite a bit of the installation to be able to do this in a responsible way.

I have 11kwt and its pretty great. Inverter heats up pretty crazy though :( 40C in my storage room where its located. Would never buy Huawei again.

That's actually part of the Commission Regulation EU 2016/631 and I misspoke - 800W is how much you can have without reporting it, provided you're not selling energy back.

Specific regulations for on-grid systems in Poland are:

-3,68kW limit for single -phase installations - that's actually a technical limitation.

-10kW limit to receive subsidies for purchase of the system.

-50kW limit for net-billing as a private person, but you'll have to first ensure your connection has the capacity to handle that - it's usually 12kW or less, so you'd need to apply for an increase, which will go through depending on the infrastructure in your area.

Overall large PV farms in Poland lately went through series of temporary downtime in situations where the grid went above the safety threshold of 253V, but prosumers were largely unaffected by this.

Everyone is in on it because panels are cheap and electricity has become expensive, so the investment pays itself off in a few years - especially when you go over the subsidised limit of 2600kWh annually per household with children. My sneaky plan with those panels is to remain below that threshold.

I’m not gonna tell you that you should buy an AC. I will say that I was similarly reluctant to buy one until a few years ago. That first year, it felt like an indulgent splurge. I used it maybe once the whole summer. The next summer we had record highs above 110F (>43C), and I was grateful to have it for that week. It definitely helped to reassure me that my pup was safe through the heat wave. And I haven’t used it at all since then, it’s just sitting around taking up space until I deem it necessary again.

Does that make the problem worse? Technically I have to say yes. But on any meaningful scale? I think the manufacturing of the unit has had far more impact than any usage, and probably will for the entire time I own it. And it’s a drop in the bucket compared to, say, owning and using a car.

Put up a plugin solar panel/rectifier thing, in Germany we call them Balkonkraftwerk - you can put them behind your window as well if you don't have a balcony or roof. That easily offsets the electricity consumption of your AC.

> Balkonkraftwerk

Balkonkraftwerk = Balcony Power Plant

Thank you Germany for your language.

> I'm resisting the urge to buy AC because I feel like AC makes the problem worse

What many call AC or air-conditioning, a lot of the world calls "heat pumps", and modern heat pumps are not only incredibly efficient, but they work both ways, and are also one of the most efficient ways to heat homes in the winter. So there's a good chance that by replacing or augmenting your home's heating system with a two-way heat pump (aka AC), you can actually increase your home's energy efficiency.

And some quick research and back of the napkin math makes me think that residential air conditioning accounts for less than 2% of carbon emissions. [0.37 (residential share of total electricity consumption) * 0.17 (air conditioning's share of residential electricity use) * 0.25 (electricity's share of total emissions) = 1.57%]. You are one out of 8 billion people. Your individual contribution to carbon emissions is a drop in the bucket of that 2%, and remember, a heat pump may actually increase your home's energy efficiency. At scale, heat pumps are definitely a potential net-win.

All that to say, don't beat yourself up or suffer too much over this. Individual choices are not the driving factor of climate change. Climate change is driven by industry, specifically oil and gas, and the responsibility needs to fall on those industries to account for negative externalities. You can offset your own carbon emissions for probably under a hundred Euro a year. But what really needs to happen to reduce carbon emissions is that large companies and industries need to be held accountable with carbon taxes.

TL;DR, just get AC to protect yourself and your family, and spend your suffering and energy pushing for industries to be held responsible instead of beating yourself up about it.

> by replacing or augmenting your home's heating system with a two-way heat pump (aka AC), you can actually increase your home's energy efficiency.

Only if you would otherwise heat your home using electricity anyway (or if that electricity is produced using low-emission methods).

If it’s produced using gas plants, co-generation is likely still more efficient, for example – but these will hopefully also be phased out at some point.

Please buy an A/C. Depending on where you live in Italy, some places have temperatures of 40C+ and add to that the humidity, it's a matter of life or death and not just inconvenience.

And yet this thread will start to get full of people “having doubts” and “just asking questions” any minute now

Get a heat pump system. What extra energy you use in the summer may be roughly counterbalanced by the savings in heating in the winter.

Heat pump heating is the most efficient way to heat a space (well, not counting simply putting a block of highly refined plutonium in your house).

Get yourself a modern little mini-split and just don't have kids if you feel strongly about affecting where our habitat is headed.

> The only thing that can save the planet

I find it arrogant to talk about saving "the planet." It's usually about saving the comfortable status-quo lifestyle of the developed world.

If you're forgoing AC, isn't that totally the opposite of being comfortable?

> I find it arrogant to talk about saving "the planet." It's usually about saving the comfortable status-quo lifestyle of the developed world.

When in reality it's one of those unusual instances where the developed world is actually seeing a planet full of people, instead of just their little bubble.

The problem is it's a bit late for that.

>The only thing that can save the planet is a fair carbon tax, because the situation feels more and more desperate every day, we need to slow this thing up.

Really? Please explain how that will fix anything. Governments can't do anything about climate change. Only a private sector innovation to sequester excess carbon would actually work.

I'm not convinced your using AC contributed to global warming.

Taxes on beefs are much higher than for pork which are much higher than for poultry which are much higher than on eggs, which are much higher than on this or that vegetables.

Taxes on transport based on the efficiency.

This kind of taxation would have the direct impact of rebalancing consumptions towards a smaller carbon impact globally.

So, it will just be more expensive to use air conditioning due to these taxes, and we'll just be poorer as a result? How does that solve anything?

It incentivizes the use of carbon neutral or even carbon negative technology by pricing in the external cost.

So, again, you're not telling me how this solves climate change besides by making poorer.

I guess you missed the part about reducing carbon output then. And a carbon tax can of course be made revenue neutral with a dividend, if your government is socially inclined.

I'm sorry and I'm trying to address this in good faith. How does this change anything besides making Italian grandparent poorer? He's still going to use AC, even if it costs double.

He might opt for solar panels to power his ac. I hear that it’s usually sunny in Italy when it’s hot. The power company too might opt for solar panels instead of gas. With a dividend he might come out richer than before if he manages to reduce his carbon output sufficiently.

Italians are on average very poor compared to Americans. Who has money to put solar panels in an apartment they don't even own? This is not a reasonable suggestion, and either way, taxes the consumer for wanting to be comfortable.

800W of panels hanging from your balcony or windows and an inverter costs a few hundred Euros and you recoup the costs in less than five years.