"I want to use my washing machine whenever I want" sounds like a very poor reason to destroy the environment."

The environment is going to be destroyed anyway, since the rest of the world will continue to use their washing machine whenever they want. [1]

The current European approach to climate change is completely bonkers and will only make Europeans poorer and miserable.

[1] https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/annual-co2-emissions-per-...

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triceratops 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> since the rest of the world will continue to use their washing machine whenever they want

No they have even less money than Europe. They'll do the smart thing, which is using electricity when it's cheap.

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throwaway473825 4 hours ago | parent [-]

You'd have a point if those countries had followed Europe in replacing coal with imported gas, but few countries outside of Europe have done that. Without imported gas, electricity is generally cheap.

	▲	triceratops 4 hours ago \| parent \| next [-]
		China burns coal and has still had time-of-use pricing since 1999. The price of electricity is a function of demand with respect to supply. Even if the fuel is cheap, heavy demand will cost more to supply than low demand. https://www.climatescorecard.org/2019/02/time-of-use-electri...
	▲	locallost 3 hours ago \| parent \| prev [-]
		Europe did not replace coal with gas. The only country that did this worth mentioning is the US.

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jawiggins 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

It already has made them poorer and miserable. The Draghi report was all about how they were poorer due to these things. Of course they decided not to follow the recommendations.