this post was submitted on 22 Jun 2024
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Sure!
"Cooling is a big contributor to global warming. Much of the existing cooling equipment uses hydrofluorocarbon refrigerants, which are potent greenhouse gases, and use a lot of energy, making them a double burden for climate change. Even with the phasedown of hydrofluorocarbons required by the Kigali Amendment to the Montreal Protocol, business as usual means emissions from refrigeration and air conditioning are expected to double by 2030 and triple by 2050, rising from 7 per cent of global GHG emissions today. Right now, the more we cool, the more we heat the planet."
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This is a bit like complaining that electric heaters are a big problem because they use a lot of energy and may contain greenhouse gas products inside them.
There are entire industries belching thick black smoke into the atmosphere because it’s slightly cheaper than the clean alternative. That’s where climate change efforts should be focused, not on the small creature comforts provided for humans so that they don’t suffer in the heat.
Where do you think the energy for electric heating and cooling comes from? Thin air?
AC still makes up like 7% of global GHG emissions. That's more than aviation and computing... Combined. That's on par with the entire iron and steel industries. In fact, it's almost on par with the GHG emissions of all agriculture output and is expected to exceed the entire agriculture industry's GHG emissions before 2050.
Except when we have 100% renewable low emission electricity and transition away from CFC refrigerants, they’ll essentially drop to zero emissions. There’s nothing particularly bad about air conditioning. It is more and more becoming a necessity for survival due to climate change. If you don’t like that, your target is the fossil fuel industry, not the working class people who use air conditioning to avoid suffering.
Meanwhile, animal agriculture will always be extremely harmful to the environment due to methane, nitrous oxide, and various other issues. I’m happy for you to criticise people for using air conditioning if you’ll commit to going vegan.
You do realize that renewables still have an emissions footprint from manufacturing, transportation, deployment, transmission, and recycling/retirement... Right? That they're limited lifespan disposable goods? So are batteries.
Moreover, each new solar panel has an opportunity cost in that it could be used to supplant fossil fuels in an area of the world that would actually benefit from it, rather than helping a facility THAT ALREADY HAS A TEMPERATURE CONTROL SYSTEM cool things down further because Americans are too spoiled with their extreme electricity consumption patterns to do anything else.
Yeah, are you going vegan, though?