Air conditioning and heating can be virtually eliminated with proper insulation.
Uh, no, they can't. Not even close. Especially in places like Arizona. Decrease? Sure. Eliminate? Not a chance in hell. And you won't even get people to cut it very deeply at this point either, because significant advances at this point require either massive capital investments which people can't afford or things like eliminating windows in houses. And I'm sorry, but getting rid of the windows in my house IS a decrease in my standard of living.
I know that large energy demands are attributable to pumping water to and from buildings. Growth here is disproportionately large, since cities tend to grow out from water sources, increasing the distance water needs to travel to get to new developments. Enormous reductions are possible.
How? By building lots of new resevoirs? Not going to happen.
If you read George Monbiot's "Heat", you get a very good description of today's supermarkets, with decorative lighting to enhance the appearance of food. Displays also take up space, increasing space conditioning costs and putting pressure on real estate. Very little of this contributes to measurable lifestyle improvement.
Measurable for whom? If the grocer is turning a bigger profit, then it sure as hell affects
his lifestyle. And if he's not turning a bigger profit, he wouldn't be doing it.
Refrigeration accounts for 15% of a household's average energy use. The average refrigerator today is much more energy efficient than its ancestor, but it is also much larger. In 1947, the average refrigerator held less than 10 cubic feet. Today's average is well over double at 23 cubic feet even though the average family is smaller. If we store the same amount of food in a larger refrigerator, the refrigerator has to work harder.
And if we're storing more food? What then? Reducing the frequency of trips to the supermarket reduces energy consumption. Make refrigerators smaller, and you're likely to create unintended consequences.
It's not improving our lives. If we're storing more food, it's either going to waste or it's going to waist.
Well, no. We could simply be storing things that previously we would buy more frequently (milk, for example) or even things we might have simply done without (fresh fruits and juices). People are buying large refrigerators because they
want them. Guess what will happen if you mandate that all refrigerators be 10 cubic feet instead of 20? People will just buy two. Frankly, the idea that you can walk around telling people what they need and what they don't need is ridiculous. But then, I guess not everyone believes in the concept of freedom or limited government. News flash: it's not the liberal democracies and capitalist societies which have the worst energy efficiencies, it's authoritarian states and centrally-planned economies.
People now illuminate their pictures, their closets, their counters, their cabinets. I have a friend who bought an energy-efficient refrigerator that, to his frustration, came with 3 incandescent lightbulbs.
The horror. Because those lightbulbs are going to dominate its energy usage, right?
Computers are getting more and more efficient. Enormous reductions are possible.
And they all involve tradeoffs (either lower computing power or more expensive manufacturing techniques) which some people aren't willing to make.
And then there are the hundreds of useless gadgets.
And god knows, the government is really who we want to be telling us what's a useful gadget and what's a useless one, and therefore which ones we're allowed to use and which we cannot. Thanks but no thanks, big brother.
