Energy Consumption Debate

We can’t conserve our way out of this. We have to electrify everything we can, and completely decarbonize our electric grid. To do that, we need to make clean electricity cheaper than fossil electricity, and just as reliable. Spending our focus on trying to convince people to stop consuming energy is a bit counterproductive. Your carbon footprint is almost certainly massive even if you personally use zero electricity, because the supply chain that keeps you alive is extremely carbon intensive. I

You're not going to get very far trying to impose your subjective perspective of usefulness on other people's use of energy. Energy is one of the foundational pillars of modern society, and other people are going to use it for all sorts of things, including activities that you don't like (but that are liked by others).I'd suggest focusing your irritation on advocating for universally clean generation of energy. Regardless of how much energy each of us uses, and regardless

We have become so wasteful with energy. at a mass scale this will consume a lot of electricity but we only think of dollar cost now

Lowering energy usage doesn't solve the climate problem it just slows the devastation. We need to use clean energy regardless if it's for AC or for work to have a worthwhile impact on that half of things. From another view: it's better to live well sustainably than be proud of unsustainably living miserably. To do that we need to convince people to pay more for electricity generation instead of pointing out they likely wouldn't die if they used less dirty energy.

What is bad about using less energy? What is good about using more?

People in the developed world consume massive amounts of energy on non-essentials. Energy consumptions is not the problem. In fact, it's strongly correlated with quality of life. The problem is polluting sources of energy.Singling out one non-essential for its use of energy and banning it, while leaving all others legal, makes no sense. Doing so is a case of scapegoating one small facet of a larger phenomenon, instead of addressing the root problem.

Depends on who you are talking about. Having no climate control to climate control will cost energy no matter how efficient the heat pump. No car to an electric car will cost energy.For those who have all the that, the de-growth camp asks that people give up meat, down-size their houses and give up one of their cars. Maybe they should, but that will never win any popular support. The answer is always both though, we need to make things more efficient and produce more energy than ever using re

"Significant reduction of energy consumption" is only a possible answer if you're able and prepared to suppress the lifestyles of billions of people through any means necessary.

It is not, because 1) it is quite a small part of total electricity consumption (around 1/30 in U.S.), and 2) it is unlikely to be cut down, due to more and more people on the planet and getting higher standard of living.Important actions are those that are realistic and have an impact. For example, cancelling coal/gas power plants, building more CO2-free power plants, getting rid of combustion motors in naval transport, etc. Everybody can have an AC if we have CO2-free electric ene

And perhaps we shouldn't just blindly waste energy just because it happens to be cheap.