Costa Rica Energy - Our actions have serious consequences.
Scott Oliver
In the face of daily front page news regarding the catastrophic consequences of climate change it is surprising that so many real estate buyers coming to Costa Rica still insist on buying homes with air conditioners. In the USA: "We use about one-sixth of our electricity to cool ourselves. That's more than the total electricity consumption of India, a country whose population exceeds 1 billion. To get the electricity, we burn oil and coal."(1) Yes! It can be hot and humid living at the beach but if Mother Nature has designed your body so that you feel it's impossible for you to live in those temperatures without air conditioning then perhaps you should question your decision to live there?
The wonderful thing about Costa Rica is that you can choose your weather. You can choose to build or buy a home at higher elevations, where the views are better and where you can enjoy a cool breeze without air conditioning. In the USA: "According to the Air-Conditioning and Refrigeration Institute, shipments of air conditioners and heat pumps have tripled over the last three decades. The percentage of single-family homes built with central air has gone from 36 to 87." It is baffling as to why anybody needs air conditioning in the Central Valley where there is normally a pleasant breeze, the highest temperature is around 82 degrees and then cools off to the low 60's in the evening. Having lived in ten countries, I can't imagine a more perfect climate. Unfortunately developers are listening to their customers and since so many buyers ask for air conditioning, developers are now including this in many of their homes in the Central Valley. Ten years ago, they would never have thought of it but...
Like many nations, Costa Rica already has energy problems, we experienced some serious shortages (3) earlier this year and building thousands of new homes with air conditioning will only make things worse. There are a hundred reasons we can come up with to justify our actions in the Middle East but the end result is that as we sit here reading this today, more than half a million mostly innocent people have been slaughtered in the past few years and millions more have been displaced because we choose to ignore the basic fact that we are using far too much energy. This is no political argument, this is merely a request to carefully consider the consequences of our actions and remember that the future of our children's planet is in our hands. Written by Scott Oliver, author of How To Buy Costa Rica Real Estate Without Losing Your Camisa and Costa Rica's Guide To Making Money Offshore.
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