That's a uniquely American perspective.
Japanese homes often don't have space heating. The Swiss often keep their homes at 20°C in the winter.
Most of the globe doesn't travel everywhere by car. Arguably it's the intention to remove pain as much as possible which resulted in the opioid epidemic.
There's a point at which trying to get rid of inconveniences becomes harmful.
Chicago building codes require 68F as a minimum for residential in winter conditions, so I think that's reasonable as a "habitable minimum yet not necessarily ideal" benchmark: https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/bldgs/supp_info/chicag...
The thing about the nations I mentioned is that they either barely use any AC, like Switzerland, or set it to 25°C or more, like Japan.
They embrace discomfort - most of the world does.
If it's in the 80s outside, I'll probably drop the inside temp to 76, again to keep humidity down. I rarely set it below that. 74 feels cold in my normal summer attire of shorts and a tee shirt. If we have an 80 degree day with low humidity, I'll open the windows.
The rest of the world also has these things, just doesn't use them nearly as much.
50 years ago hot middle eastern countries had no AC. Not because they had some sort of symbiosis with nature and the summer heat. It was because the average AC costed the sum of 8-month of average income. As AC prices dropped, and the average income increased, having an AC became the norm.
Of course the richest people, richest economies get their first and to a non inquisitive or surface only thinking, it’s some how a unique was on discomfort or lust for luxury, when it’s just simple economics. You can see rich Asian countries and cities leading the “War on discomfort” now a days as their economies have developed and stabilized, but they face unique discomforts that previous rich nations didn’t.
In absolute terms, yes. But per capita there are quite a few richer countries, like Switzerland, where people genuinely seem to brave the elements as part of their culture.
Sure, everyone adopts conveniences, but I've never seen anyone do it to the extent Americans do.
> I've never seen anyone do it to the extent Americans do.
Sounds more like observational or cognitive bias tbh. For example, the Japanese market is notorious for building gizmos and machines for far less grand inconveniences that the weather or long-distance travel. They eat a lot of rice in Japan, so it makes sense they invented the rice cooker. To many Americans (today) who don't eat a lot of rice having an entire appliance for just cooking rice might seem like a crazy war on discomfort and too much of adopting convivences. What's next? a machine just for Turkish coffee?
Whenever I go shopping, it's insane how much they heat most places, while people are wearing heavy winter jackets.
Those minor conveniences are a drop in the bucket when it comes to total CO2 output.