Indoctrination Nation, Sustainable Development, and Nudging

Recently, our natural gas utilities started to mail its customers a “nudging” letter, colorfully printed in green, blue, and black, under the guise of helping customers decide how much gas they consumed, compared to previous months and to homes of similar size in the area. The fact that they had access to such data and took the time to find homes of similar size in the area is bothersome enough.

Having access to such data, the gas company is letting us know whether we consumed more gas than “efficient homes” or more/less than similar homes, all described in “therms.” The therms were colored in green for efficient, blue for your home, and black for similar homes.

A quick search revealed that a “therm” is a “unit of heat equivalent to 100,000 Btu or 1.055 x 10⁸ joules.” Since physics is not my forte, it might as well be in Greek. The gas company wrote that “a therm is a standard unit of measurement used to calculate natural gas use.”