Tommy Siegel | Bluesky | website
Transcript
Comic in 4 Panels:
Header: It’s That Easy!
Panel 1: The year is 1994. A dad with short black hair, in a blue shirt, red shorts, and white sneakers with calf high white socks, kneels with one arm resting on a knee and the other raised demonstratingly in front of a kid in a green ball cap, yellow shirt, blue pants, and green sneakers. There is a round metal trash can behind them.
Dad: Pick up your litter and save the Earth!
Panel 2: The year is 2004. Same dad, but in brown cargo shorts, brown shoes, and ankle high white socks speaking to the same kid. There is a green recycle bucket behind them.
Dad: Recycle and you can save the Earth!
Panel 3: The year is 2014. Same dad, but wearing a bike helmet, black athletic pants, and black sneakers to the same kid. A bike is behind them.
Dad: Reduce your carbon footprint and you can save the Earth!
Panel 4: The year is 2024. Same dad, but he’s in the same outfit from panel 1. There is a massive fire behind them.
Dad: Completely restructure global economic systems and you may be able to save a remnant of humanity!
"Just don't use AC (during a heat wave killing thousands) and you can save the Earth!" (2026)
If you use AC and you could instead be using passive cooling (managing the light fading on your house) and fans, without endangering your health, then you deserve criticism.
We need more AC for hospitals and schools and care homes and so on, not my friends who just didn't want to be a bit sweaty. Who then blast it at fifteen degrees below ambient instead of acclimatising a bit.
Of course reducing energy consumption is always nice, but
Nah, this is the thing. This is pushing off responsibility for huge corporate energy consumption onto consumers. Even in very AC heavy America, it accounts for something like 7% of energy use. Imo, fuck telling people to just deal with the heat over 7% of energy use while private jets are allowed to flit around and data centers are gobbling up power, often very energy inefficiently. It's a comparative drop in the bucket.
You're doing the thing the comic is making fun of here.
Also, yeah, I hate when people blast AC 15 degree below ambient temperature, especially when ambient is at 44°C like last week and 'blasting' is 29°C /s
That is assuming a post was not about °F which would be a laughable difference in temperature completely.
Also, there are people who blast heaters in winter, too. Where I live now this is not that much of an issue, but you can't just decide not to use any heater when it's below -20°C outside
Users of private jets deserve criticism as well, and proportionally more criticism than those using AC - however in my circles, the ultra-rich are criticised a lot while my friends actually buy AC (even extremely inefficient single-hose units) rather than feeling adequately admonished.
You cite the low percentage of US energy consumed by AC as a reason not to call it out, yet flying accounts for 4% of global emissions, and private aircraft (so, little Cessnas as well as private jets) account for under 2% of that. source. The global baseline is 0.08% of emissions, and yet you think a use case with 7% of US energy consumption is too insignificant to criticise?*
I think two things are going on here:
But the fact is that we can't afford to wait for the ultra-rich to have an uncharacteristic selfless turn because the world is on fire right now and we'll be waiting until we're dead. (They'll be fine). And we certainly can't rely on the ultra-rich to shoulder the burden, because the burden is too big. Even though each mega-wealthy person contributes a grossly outsized amount to climate change, their total contribution is not that significant, because there are so few of them. Suppose the top 0.1% each contributes 100x more than the bottom 90%. Well, 0.001×100 = 0.1, i.e. the bottom 90% together contribute 10× more than the top 0.1% together. Illustrative numbers, but if we only do 10% of the work to combat climate change, we will all be fucked.
So, we can't afford to think like that. We can't afford to think like the comic wants us to think, even though it's understandable.
*These figures aren't directly comparable without more information - it's likely that 7% figure is a percentage of electricity usage, not total energy usage, for example, whereas the 0.08% figure is directly emissions. The figures for aviation are global, and the US will have a proportionally higher responsibility. But come on - we're off by about 100× here, and those factors are just fiddling around the edges.
So in other words, the unnecessary actions of a very, very limited few alone consume nearly a third of the entire country's use of a pretty basic comfort.
I see this as rather damning if I'm being honest.
No, the fact is reducing a portion of 7% of energy use (because again, we're excluding health reasons and such which are ever more relevant in 40+C summers) will not have any noticeable impact on climate change. It just won't. And let's keep in mind this is in the shadow of many deaths here in Europe this summer... nah man, we just do not share the same principles here, I flat out disagree that's in any way a good take.
There are some cultural changes that can make a big impact; if we convinced most people in the industrial world to only eat meat once a week or go vegetarian entirely, this would definitely make a large impact. AC use will not. For the most part, systemic change is the only thing getting us out of this. And yes, our odds of accomplishing it don't look good... you not using AC in extremely hot weather will have no impact on that outcome at all, not measurably anyway.