[beckman466]

> I haven't run my gas boiler in 30 days. No heating. No warm showers.

> Sadly most people I have suggested this to think I'm nuts.

there's probably thousands of times more gas used to produce all the commodities you buy and use in your everyday life. so this strategy of individualist 'sacrifice' (vs. systemic change) is merely a fart in the wind.

[ilammy]

Exactly. Thank you for reusing cardboard while the airlines fly empty planes just to maintain their slots.

It makes you feel better for having a moral high ground, sure. Objectively it's not that big of a change, while systemic social changes take time. For the most people, it feels like not in their lifetime.

[Tarsul]

no, it's actually worthwhile. Studies for Germany said that reducing room temperature by 1 degree Celsius mean that 5-6% less gas would be used for that. Households account for like 43%[1] of gas consumption in Germany and within that it's 80% for heating and 20% for water heating; so we're talking about a few percent reduction in overall gas consumption just by heating a little less. German politicans are already asking (politely) that the citizens should do it. [1]https://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/service/gasimporte-aus-rus... [sorry it's only for paying customers but there are the numbers]

[hnaccount_rng]

Unfortunately they don’t go into any second order effects. In particular I’d be curious about how many hospitalizations it would take to zero out the advantage of reducing ~2% gas usage.

The problem we have right now is: we literally don’t know what the consequences of going cold turkey would be. It’s very likely, that creature comfort would be _completely_ unaffected. The problem lies within the industry. And it’s unclear how elastic the demand there can even be. E.g. things like ceramic burners, it’s unclear whether you can reactivate them after you let them cool down or whether they’d burst. Same goes for nearly every intermediate stage in chemical processes and storages. It’s unclear if “pausing” production doesn’t also imply “rebuilding”. And depending on the elasticity of the demand (which will probably be surprisingly high, since these companies are _extremely_ well motivated to find solutions to a problem they hadn’t had before) it’s unclear how much gas we need (both in storage and by implication still buying from Russia).

We now have best-case scenarios talking about ~6% GDP loss max. But that assume practically no second order effects and is based on GDP numbers. Ie i wouldn’t be surprised, if that requires gas to go where there simply is no pipeline.

As I said in the beginning: The problem is we don’t know how things are interconnected. Yes by all means: if you feel comfortable with a lower room temperature then lower your temp. But these 1-2% things… we don’t have 30 of those. And they are extremely costly in terms of political capital

[beckman466]

> no, it's actually worthwhile. [...] Households account for like 43%[1] of gas consumption in Germany

no it isn't.

does Germany produce the smartphones its citizens use? does it mine the rare earth minerals inside those phones? to pretend that we originate from inside of imaginary lines on a map and therefore should only be concerned with national issues is false. our world is one whole and we are all children of the same tribe.

Global North capitalists hoard science, send commoditized 'intellectual property' recipes for black boxed hardware to the Global South, collect rents on those recipes while not physically producing anything themselves... all while plundering the resources and labor/life-energy of people in the Global South.

this is a dirty rentierist black-box technological hellworld through and through. causing ecological and social damage and externalizing responsibility/costs is the name of the game here.

adding this as a source these highlights from a recent paper (especially the last point is relevant to this convo):

• Rich countries rely on a large net appropriation of resources from the global South.

• Drain from the South is worth over $10 trillion per year, in Northern prices.

• The South’s losses outstrip their aid receipts by a factor of 30.

• Unequal exchange is a major driver of underdevelopment and global inequality.

• The impact of excess resource consumption in the North is offshored to the South.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S095937802...

[scandox]

40% of gas usage in Europe is domestic. I think that's not insignificant.

I agree my individual action is not very relevant but I think a widespread adoption of such measures would have an impact on political thinking in Europe. Obviously that hasn't happened.