For all the bitching and moaning at the NY Times, I triple dog dare them to give up their own air conditioning…..yeah, I know, good luck with that!
THE blackouts that left hundreds of millions of Indians sweltering in the dark last month underscored the status of air-conditioning as one of the world’s most vexing environmental quandaries.
Fact 1: Nearly all of the world’s booming cities are in the tropics and will be home to an estimated one billion new consumers by 2025. As temperatures rise, they — and we — will use more air-conditioning.
Fact 2: Air-conditioners draw copious electricity, and deliver a double whammy in terms of climate change, since both the electricity they use and the coolants they contain result in planet-warming emissions.
Fact 3: Scientific studies increasingly show that health and productivity rise significantly if indoor temperature is cooled in hot weather. So cooling is not just about comfort.
Sum up these facts and it’s hard to escape: Today’s humans probably need air-conditioning if they want to thrive and prosper. Yet if all those new city dwellers use air-conditioning the way Americans do, life could be one stuttering series of massive blackouts, accompanied by disastrous planet-warming emissions.
What a quandary: live a modern life and see something never come to fruition sometime in the sometime sometime future possibly maybe perhaps, or give up our modern conveniences and still be at the mercy of nature?
It is easy to decry the problem but far harder to know what to do…
Lead the way, Elisabeth Rosenthal, and refuse to use the planet killing A/C.
I was listening from my living room in New York on a steamy Sunday morning. Given the topic of our conversation, I had the air-conditioner off, and the temperature was 85 or so. I couldn’t concentrate.
Hmm, didn’t work out to well, eh?
Since the article is no longer accepting comments (it was just posted on the 18th of August), I’ve sent a letter to the editor daring them all to give A/C up. Think the Times will print it?
