I find your comment to be at the absolute peak of sanctimony. Who are you to decide if it is necessary or not? Furthermore, why are you justified in negatively stereotyping Americans – a diverse group of individuals?
Even many northern US states (around the same Latitude as Madrid, north), on average, are 30-35+ every day during the summer and 0C to -10C in the winter. Many Canadians have air con.
So yes, heating and air con is a requirement in many areas. I live in a northern state, and we regularly have full weeks that are 38-40C.
A part time job of mine is helping a buddy's solar company and right now I'm working on a project, for an older couple who are building a 4200sqft house with 4 mini-splits, 2 electric boilers that switch to gas when it's cold, 3 refrigerators, 2 deep freezes and a potential future electric vehicle. There's a pool too but that changes the dynamics of the system greatly but I don't design and quote that unless they really want to spend $$$.
I'm glad they're deciding to go solar but I see this so often it hurts. An older couple without kids in a giant house in the desert that requires immense heating and cooling wants some solar to help offset their gross over consumption. Rather than scale down to a, still large, 2000sqft high efficiency house they go with cheap construction so they have more than enough space for the one time a year all the family shows up. Oh yah then they fill it with crap that's rarely if ever used.
There's no judgement thrown to the customer as this is the reality of the world we live in, but I see this as seriously problematic. Especially going forward as these older individuals die. Can a family of 4 or 6 afford that place? Do they even want a place so large which requires such an inordinate amount of maintenance? Three 1400sqft high efficiency homes could be built on approximately that same space bringing down the price of the home, reducing maintenance and providing more than one couple space to live.
Sorry, that was more of a rant than anything. Europe is not the promised land but the US really has some screwy priorities when it comes to housing.
Lol, you write that as if the Europeans were consuming half as much because they are morally enlightened.
Europeans use 6Mwh/person because thats as much as their emasculated societies can steal from Africa. May I remind you they didn't leave Africa very willingly in the 50s-70s. But they kept on stealing anyway!
Thats right. Steal. Libya, Algeria, Niger. The French convertible Franc. The French senate bemoaning just this week that Macron "lost" Africa. Lost Africa? Africa is not France's to lose!
Unlike, say, Japan or Korea that have more than just a token few LNG terminals and pay for their gas with monitors and great cars.
> Who are you to decide if it is necessary or not? > Why are you justified in negatively stereotyping AmericansThe people who complained about those issues thought they were “on the right side” as well.
But in the end it’s all just busybodies trying to force other to live their life the way they think it should be lived.
Do you disagree that humans need to minimise waste in order to fight climate change?
Allow me to respond with a slight tangent:
Suppose you care about reducing plastic in the ocean. So you try to reduce your usage of plastic straws. You spend a whole lot of time convincing everyone you know to buy bamboo straws or such.
Plastic straws make up less than 0.1% of the plastic in the ocean. Meanwhile, fishing nets make up ~40%. Plastic straws are a hard problem to solve, and solving them accomplishes less than 1/400th of the fishing net problem.
And yet, we hear a lot about plastic straws but nothing about fishing nets. Why?
Because it's the more consumer-facing solution. It's vital that people focus on the solution that solves the problem, rather than wthe one that is most easily pointed to.
Should we do both? In theory, sure. But in practice people have finite time, and you have 30 seconds max before they start tuning you out, so you're better off giving your elevator pitch on fishing nets.
When is it net-negative compared to pulling energy from the grid?
Why ask something akin to "why does anyone ever even try to audit stuff, tho?" What's with the stark epistemological nihilism?
Why do you even respond if you won't actually address any of the questions? How is that not exactly the bad faith argument style you imply I make?
I have no doubt we could examine OP’s life and find plenty of “wasteful” use of energy but no doubt OP would say “that’s different”. It’s always “the other guy” in these cases.
Add on top it’s a lazy comment that adds nothing to the conversation.
I've seen stuff that or more vile etc. of course, but as far as sanctimoniousness goes, this is the worst I've seen in my several decades on the internet.