"we should be prioritizing passive cooling techniques over active ones" and "there are people who will need air conditioners to survive and/or function" can both be true at the same time and I am slightly baffled by (and a little suspicious about) how this seems to suddenly be a Hot Topic

@joepie91 i think it connects to eu vs. us people throwing bits of gravel at each other defensively over stuff like https://hannahritchie.substack.com/p/heat-guns-america-europe

@maya hrm. I'm only getting bits of the arguing in my periphery so I don't have a good view of the 'main thread' of the conversation, but I'm seeing people weirdly hyperfocusing on things like "air conditioners put more heat in the air" (a thing that has also been part of the local conversation in NL) and conversely "there is literally nothing wrong with air conditioners"

and the whole thing just... smells, to me. it reminds me *a lot* of how a lot of the conflict around nuclear power and solar power alike was instigated by the fossil fuel industry to secure its economic position into the future by frustrating buildouts, for example. but also other cases of propaganda.

I don't know. I get suspicious when something *so suddenly* becomes such a hot topic with such polarizing views, because all too often that's some actor intentionally stoking conflict to frustrate legitimate conversation about the topic.

@maya (it's especially suspicious when it suddenly becomes a whole Thing in many different regions of the world simultaneously because, despite how it might look to us fedi folks, *most*  people still primarily center their social contact around the people in their direct vicinity, and don't have all that much international contact)

@joepie91 i mean to be fair i think we normally all talk about this when it's hot and it's hot a lot of places right now? not to have too potato-brained a take haha

@maya there have definitely been conversations about AC during hot times before, but those were a distinctly different shape than the ones seemingly being had now, and eg. local media here weren't talking about it much then either

@joepie91 if south africa were having a debate about it rn that'd be different lol

@maya idk this is a bit hard to explain, my brain is basically just going "that conversation is the *wrong* shape and I do not see why it should be"

@maya (unfortunately these hunches have historically usually turned out to be correct...)

@joepie91 @maya
honestly probably

there was this whole heating law fiasco in germany where the fdp pushed hard to keep it "technology open" which basically completely invalidated the law by allowing combustion based heaters if it supports renewable fuels too

so hybrid natural gas+hydrogen furnaces that will only ever see natural gas.

and one of the arguments they used was that heat pumps were "too disruptive" to install or something. anyways those same fdp politicians then got acs installed, naturally

@joepie91 @maya
anyways i personally think we need *both* active and passive cooling options

alter building code to require blinds on large windows, and to have a place to install air conditioners