To Ban Air-con

[chaosmaker]

On a rapidly heating planet, shouldn't we be looking for ways to build/fit housing for all sorts of extreme weather?
Air-con just makes it hotter for everyone overall as it adds heat into the environment and makes it worse overall.

Can I ask if the use of sash windows is due to being able to open the top and bottom simultaneously?

But then those homes are often freezing in winter. The in-laws are in Portugal and they like to visit us in the U.K. to be warm!

Cooling uses less energy than heating so a well insulated new home that uses AC for a few weeks in summer will still use less energy than an old house with no AC.

AC is basically fine if the trade off is less heating required in winter.

Kind of agree with this. AI has a terrible impact environmentally. And not sure that something that increases us no longer using our brains and gives us more options for doomscrolling is very good for us anyway .

Don’t be silly!!!

More people die in Europe from heat each year than in the US from guns (3x).

Air con is 3% of global emissions but the human benefit is vast.

Price in the environmental damage via tax and use it to offset the carbon elsewhere (eg use it to fund replacement of biomass heating in SE Asia).

And yes, also to the house design stuff where feasible.

Don’t be ridiculous! I lived in a Queenslander with no aircon for 10 years and summer it was regularly over 50 degrees in our bedroom! I have a lot of medical conditions and I didn’t die! If you’re an idiot and go out and stand in the sun then yes you will get heatstroke but most people can’t afford aircon with Australian prices!

If no aircon, we need to build homes more carefully. They need east & west facing windows to ensure ventilation & a through draught. Shutters are important too to give shade.
Our house has a sitting room on the north end of the house and shaded by a large tree. East & west facing windows that all open wide to let air through. It is always cool in there. No need for aircon.

If you simply google how many excess deaths could be prevented in Europe if there was more air-conditioning, it's possible you change your mind

Then again, climate enthusiast like to sacrifice everyone to their climate issues .... literally on this occasion.

Does it really though?

I think AI may be devastating, but not via environmental damage.

Intelligence from a machine is far more carbon efficient than from a human.

And total US data centre water usage is one-sixtieth of water usage for almond production.

The way we design urban areas make a massive difference to how hot they feel. Houses in the UK need to be designed to cope with hot and cold weather, we need insulation and doubleglazing for the winter and make use of curtains and shutters in the summer. Plant lots of trees to keep things cool in summer and we all need to do simple things like shutting curtains and windows on the sunny side of our house and opening them on the shady side or at night and making use of velux windows (heat rises so if you open them you cool your house even on the hottest days).

Offset it by using solar energy and a home battery. We have a portable AC but it’s faf to set it up, when we used it in the past we used solar and stored powered.
Since the heat wave this week, we have literally been living off grid, been using washing machine, oven, heating our hot water tank all for free.
It is high time the gov helped subsidise greener homes because not everyone is lucky enough to have a system like ours set up. An AC carbon footprint is low /close to nothing if you have a green home.

We do need to build homes more carefully. Many have been built for warmth without thought of heat in the UK. But aircon has to be the solution as we can't rebuild everything at once.

Absolutely agree. They use a huge amount of power, and while they may keep you cool for a bit, like a lot of things we do, we're simply contributing to the climate nightmare that future generations will have to cope with (or not, as the case will probably be).

Frig the planet, if i could afford aircon id have it

People are happy to save the planet when it means putting a yoghurt carton in the recycling.

They are not happy to save the planet when it actually means impacting their standard of living. So air con, central heating, foreign holidays, pets, more children etc.

This is why the future is largely doomed to suffer whatever happens with climate change.

Yep, this.
Im at the point now where I feel like it doesn’t matter what we do on an individual basis as the millionaires and billionaires just wipe all that effort out by either holidaying on their super yachts, taking their private jets wherever they want to or building these fucking huge data centres everywhere.
It’s one rule for us and another rule for them.

The worst thing a person can do to the planet is add yet another consumer to the over 8 billion already in existence.

I'm childfree, so have done my part, and will continue to enjoy my air conditioned bedroom ☺️

By that logic should we also ban central heating?🙄

God I hate the phrase “to be fair” in comparing the mega wealthy flying around the globe on their private jets to their private super yachts to normal people having a two week break in Spain once a year, it’s not a “fair” comparison at all.

I’ve never flown, never will. Don’t drive either. But will my individual actions make any difference the rate the ultra wealthy are destroying the planet 😭

It's 47 C in parts of India, and over a 100 people have died of heatstroke. Wait until a rapidly growing Indian middle class all starts buying air con.
We will be really cooked then.

I can speak for the part of the Mediterranean I live in when I say this isn't true - except for the shutters.

We are fully air conditioned. I have 5 split units in my home alone. I don't know any homes or work placed without AC.

YABU OP. And utterly ridiculous.

Makemydaypunk

Millions of people go on holidays a year, or go abroad for business reasons/ to commute even, if they didn’t, I’d guess it could compare to or surpass the environmental impact of the mega rich in terms of yachts and private jets. Sorry on the to be fair, I use it all the time!!

But wd dont want to make our houses colder in the winter!

39 degrees in Spain a couple of days ago.
An elderly couple died in the next town over because of the heat.
Both 80+ so not entirely unused to the heat