[chocalot]

> The same goes for things like offshore wind power, my life is made more difficult because most people expect their home to be 70F when it is 60F outside and 60F when it is 70F outside, anything else would incur undue hardship.

This is an overly simplistic view of demands on energy, but it might be one of the easiest for people decry. (As it happens, comfort is nice though.)

> should I be penalized for wanting to live a life that has little or no environmental impact at cost of those who want to live in reasonable comfort while being a part of/contributing to, society?

No, but it's also unrealistic to expect to be sheltered from all externalities of society.

After all, switching to sail cargo ships is itself reducing an externality incurred by others.

> what happened to the first 'R' of the three R's (reduce, reuse and recycle)

This is a good principle, but it's not universally accepted, and it still permits things that involve cargo via ocean.

As more and more people are pulled from poverty, they too will begin to use more energy to improve their lives, perhaps to the point that they can choose to follow their dreams upon retirement.

[ofalkaed]

I admitted or strongly implied everything you used as rebuttal with the exception of your final point, I don't believe using more energy improves ones life. Also, this is not a retirement dream, this is going to happen in the next year and I will be pulling over to work for ~6 months every couple years.

[chbbbbbbbbj]

>I don't believe using more energy improves ones life

That's a very interesting perspective and I would love to hear some arguments or examples supporting it.

[rkomorn]

Not OP, but in general, while some things do improve my life (climate control, hot water, cooking), I'd say there are also plenty of things that don't.

I don't think my device usage habits or media consumption actually improve my life. I'm not sure the energy that's been dumped into producing the many gadgets I've bought over the years really improved me life.

I'd say that a lot of energy goes into distracting me in a way that I can't genuinely say is an improvement.

[Unearned5161]

I think the point is larger than any individual. It involves the environment in which you're located. Infrastructure changes require energy, lots of energy. Increasing quality of life for most things we've built in our world requires investing lots of energy at the state level. You reap the benefits of this by living in the state.

[rkomorn]

Yeah, but even looking beyond individuals, my personal take is I'm no longer convinced, for example, all the massive amounts of electronics, fast fashion, and other consumerism-oriented production (which definitely do all use energy) are actually improving life. Same goes for a lot of online businesses that are occupying data centers and using electricity.

eg I'm unconvinced smart phones are truly improving life, let alone getting yearly incremental updates from every manufacturer.

So yes, to some extent, most life improvements are going to use some energy, but I wouldn't argue that most increases in spent energy lead to quality of life increases for a majority of people.

[ofalkaed]

Why do my beliefs require anything to prove them? My beliefs are not fact and I never represented them as such, I said plainly that I have mixed feeling and that society should not bow to me. The exchange in response to my post are a good example of why my goal in life is to retreat from society, everyone ignored what I said to be "right." Admittedly I did not actually say that society should not bow to me, I said probably not, but that is simply because I don't actually know and I don't believe I ever implied that I did, putting on a sweater seems a small sacrifice to me.