People like comparisons rather than numbers.

>Air conditioners use about 6% of all the electricity produced in the United States, at an annual cost of about $29 billion to homeowners.

Just a fun fact, no need to get uppity.

It's not really fun nor useful to the discussion though. It's pandering to the "you should feel bad you live in the developed world and have money".

Exactly, it was really more of a truism, there are many manynother things that the developing world consumes more of than Africa, food, education, water, electricity, gas, on and on. It's just not really useful info, it's true, but doesn't really add to the conversation.

It is meaningful to point out. As the poverty rate declines worldwide more and more people will start consuming like Americans do. There aren’t enough resources in the world to sustain that long term unless we start mining asteroids and find a cheap way to send our garbage to the sun.

The distribution of resources is grossly unequal.

It's unsustainable

I found it to be an interesting fact that I did not know before.

It’s just a fact — why do you think it’s meant to make someone feel bad?

It doesn’t make me feel bad and doesn’t strike me like it was meant to. My thought was “whoa, fascinating” and then I moved on with my morning.

Maybe the “feel bad” stuff is a you thing that your projecting out onto somebody else’s words?

Wow, you know an awful lot of stuff that doesn't follow from that fact. Can I borrow your magic crystal that lets you read minds to get the intent of the op?

I don't read it at all as "you should feel bad". I read it as "just stop using so much energy".

But why should my goal to be user the energy of undeveloped Africa?

Why isn't the goal to provide Africa with the opportunities to generate and consume as much energy as I can?

Well not for global warming, at least until we have cleaner energy...

No, it is an useful piece of data.

The American way of life is not sustainable. Even among developed countries the US is an outlier in terms of their use of resources and energy.

Who gets to decide that?

So far tech has enabled us to keep up. Why can't it continue?

We have plenty of sun that hits the desert of the country to power 10x our current energey usage. We have plenty of places to put nukes. Lots of land for wind.

There may be technologies that would enable American energy consumption at global scale. Whether it is realistic is not certain, though.

But in terms of resources it is simply not possible. If every human being consumed as many resources as an average American then the planet would go up in smoke in 6 months. That's not really an opinion, these are the numbers.

Oppressive poverty and marginally functional electricity grids are moral virtues we should all aspire to, apparently.

Or some people could just reconsider if they really needed AC on all that days.. or at that temperature.. how can such facts be perceived so huffy?

When the fact is preceded with the word "Reminder:" it implies an importance and weight to the fact that takes it out of "fun fact" territory and into judgement.

Of course, all things are not equal between the US and Africa, so the comparison isn't worth mentioning.