Who Needs Air Conditioning?

Seen on the Federalist website: “I Gave up Air Conditioning this Summer to Live within My Means.  America Should Try That.”

Good for you, pal.  He’s in his twenties, vigorous and healthy and feeling great after a camping trip during which temps got down in the forties at night and high eighties during the day.  I’m in my sixties and I just got back from a camping trip during which it got no cooler than 73 with something like 100% humidity, and I feel pretty good, too.  (Did you catch the discernable trace of conservative virtue-signaling?)

I could do without A/C if I had to.  We did do without it for years, partly for economy’s sake.  I’ve spent summers in Texas without A/C—all of them, while growing up, and one while I was pregnant.  We’ve lived through summers in Tennessee and Kansas and rural Missouri without it, sweating out a few uncomfortable nights and very long afternoons.  Survival takes some strategic planning, such as

• Put a couple of feet of insulation in the attic, along with an attic fan.
• After sundown, turn on the attic fan and open the windows.  In the morning, turn off the fan, shut the windows and pull down the shades.
• Fill up a one-to-two-gallon thermos jug with ice and cold water in the morning and drink from it during the day to save the fridge.
• If you bake or can (I used to do both), wait until the attic fan is on   You’ll be up late, but that will give you an excuse to sleep late.
• Use your outdoor grill for some of your cooking and a toaster oven, electric skillet, or hot plate for the rest, plugged into the electric socket on the porch.
• Don’t use your drier—put up a clothesline.
• Do most of your outside work in the morning and save indoor sedentary tasks for the afternoon, under the ceiling fan with bottomless ice tea.
• Adjust.  Your body is made for it.

Though grateful for the A/C now—mostly—I still kind of dread the day in late spring when it goes on, because it won’t go off until early fall.  That groan when it kicks on, the steady rumble while it’s going, the barrier that blocks the summer night and fresh air, the nervous rattle of loose objects on the stove—I don’t like any of that.  I don’t like the dependency.  I don’t like being boxed.

These are personal preferences, and maybe some pokes at first-world guilt. At first glance, Air Conditioning appears to be one of the few technologies with almost no downside.  The title of an American Heritage article from 1984, “How Air Conditioning Changed Everything,” is only a slight exaggeration.  A/C made Florida and Las Vegas possible (a mixed blessing?), along with summer movie blockbusters, indoor sleeping, and year-long factory production.  It leveraged hospital deaths and ameliorated tropical diseases.

But it also created isolation and dependency.  We no longer get to know our neighbors by strolling at dusk and stopping to chat at the porch or stoop.  And when the grid shuts down it can be devastating.  Does anybody remember the Chicago heat wave of 1995?  Most of the 700+ deaths were due to older people “air conditioned” to stay inside, and so accustomed to confinement they were afraid to go out.  With the benefit of life-changing tech, we forget how to cope, and we forget a little more with each succeeding generation.  I can survive with A/C but not without electrical power.  My kids in Clark County, Nevada, would be seriously threatened is their A/C went out, but they could get by without their smartphones.  Will my grandchildren be able to cope without their phones?  Maybe, but research about phone addition indicates it might not be easy.

Technology gives and it takes away, the saying goes.  As the pinnacle lifts us higher from earth and its earthy problems and joys, I have to wonder if we’re jacking ourselves up for a big fall.