Posted on 08/28/2024 10:51:59 AM PDT by MtnClimber
We’ve noticed over the last couple of decades a repeating cycle in which finger-wagging scolds tell us that we need to drop some of the conveniences of modernity as sacrifices to Gaia, our Mother Earth. Two examples that have come around more frequently than Halley’s Comet have been the loony broadsides launched against air conditioning and showers.
Now add to that a campaign aimed at refrigeration, because it causes “wide-ranging climate implications.”
Nicola Twilley, author of “Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves,” seems to be on a crusade to reverse the benefits of refrigeration. In an interview last month with ABC News, she discussed the “bigger downside” of refrigeration in regard to “our environment.”
“All the power that is used for cooling. It’s a huge vast contribution to climate change. And that’s before we even get to the chemicals that we use to refrigerate. They’re called refrigerants, and they are the number one thing we could tackle to mitigate climate change, according to Project Drawdown. So it’s it’s got a lot of downsides. They’re just not usually talked about.”
Refrigeration has a lot of upside, too.
“A refrigerator is one of the most important pieces of equipment in the kitchen for keeping foods safe,” says the U.S. Agriculture Department.
Human Progress, a project that highlights the “dramatic improvements in human well-being throughout much of the world,” reminds us that “Refrigeration has revolutionized public health and improved the quality of life worldwide,” and has blessed us with “remarkable benefits,” such as “reducing foodborne illnesses and improving the quality of food.”
Twilley even admits that refrigeration’s ability to keep food from spoiling is responsible for height increases among “19th-century army recruits.”
As far as we know, Twilley hasn’t called on policymakers to ban refrigeration. Nor is she the first to try to connect refrigeration with a climate disaster. Four years ago, the BBC swore that “your fridge is heating up the planet,” while in 2022, The New Yorker declared that the refrigerator had become “an agent of climate catastrophe.”
But Twilley is clearly wagging a finger, just as those who tell us daily showers are unnecessary due to water use and the carbon dioxide emitted when heating the water, and air conditioning “is a big contributor to global warming.”
The climate nags have already had plenty of policy success, particularly in virtue-signaling California, where internal-combustion engine automobiles have been outlawed, natural-gas appliances have been banned, and there will be no new gas stations built in a few cities.
But even with those Ws, the eco-tyrants, whose goal is total elimination of all opposition to their deindustrialization agenda, are never satisfied. They want to remake Western economies, keep the Third World mired in the poverty and place their controls over society. The mantle of green is nothing more than a coverup for a scheme so dark that its tenets cannot be said out loud.
I doubt if my plumber would know how to do that.
I’ll bet she hasn’t given up HER refrigerator.
And as far as water use, our property has LOTS and it’s not doing anyone any good if I restrict my use of it. It’ll just run right off instead of being recycled through a longer route of use.
I’d like to turn a herd of Cola Bears and penguins loose on their asses. That’ll teach them to stay out of the bears’ and penguins’ business.
The most good they could do would be to stop flying to Davos twice a year.
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