The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : Not Too Cool

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With a massive heat wave underway in the Northeast (temperatures are expected to reach 103 degrees here in DC), Salon is promoting a new book that argues for reducing our dependence on air conditioning:

(A)s science writer Stan Cox argues in his new book, "Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)," the dizzying rise of air conditioning comes at a steep personal and societal price. We stay inside longer, exercise less, and get sick more often -- and the electricity used to power all that A.C. is helping push the fast-forward button on global warming. The invention has also changed American politics: Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that's transformed our electoral map in the last half century. Cox navigates all of these scientific and social angles with relative ease, providing a clear explanation of how A.C. made the leap from luxury to necessity in the United States and examining how we can learn to manage the addiction before we refrigerate ourselves into the apocalypse.

You can read an interview with Cox here.

I couldn't help but be reminded of this story from a few summers ago (emphasis mine):

PARIS (AP) - The death toll in France from August's blistering heat wave has reached nearly 15,000, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday, surpassing a prior tally by more than 3,000....

The bulk of the victims -- many of them elderly -- died during the height of the heat wave, which brought suffocating temperatures of up to 104 degrees in a country where air conditioning is rare. Others apparently were greatly weakened during the peak temperatures but did not die until days later.

Asked about how air conditioning makes people safer during heat waves, Cox acknowledges, "it does have a Jekyll-and-Hyde character in that respect." He then continues, "But I think we need to look at it is as a fail-safe mechanism and recognize that a lot of the health problems that we need A.C. to solve, it may have contributed to in the first place. We need to look at the conditions under which people die in heat waves, the harsh life conditions that they're enduring more generally. That's the real root of the problem."

View all comments (9) | Leave a comment

Pete| 7.6.10 @ 10:29AM

Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that's transformed our electoral map in the last half century.

What is she talking about? I could far more easily go without AC in Colorado than, say, in NYC? Would the elite lower itself to sweat with the rest of the country or is this yet another case of "do as I say, not as I do?" What is the matter with these people?

Pete| 7.6.10 @ 10:29AM

Bob Miller| 7.6.10 @ 10:31AM

The main places on the globe to avoid over-warming are indoors.

Johnny Beigler| 7.6.10 @ 11:44AM

Dream a little dream, Mr. Cox. Under the guise of "telling us what's good for us", you may have found yet another way to rid the world of more icky people, the bane the Left's existence.

Keith I| 7.6.10 @ 1:21PM

Who needs the Administrative expenses of Death Panels? What the left lacks in competence it makes up for in length of tentacles.

SCM| 7.6.10 @ 1:30PM

The moment that all liberals and progressives have gone back to living as neanderthals wih no modern conveniences is the moment that I will start to consider joining them in cutting out air conditioning. I don't need to sweat it that this will happen anytime soon.

Grzmlyk| 7.6.10 @ 2:10PM

Well, come on, SCM: Good liberals like Al Gore and the thugs in the Obama administration HAVE to keep cool; why, if they were too warm to tell us how to live, what ever would we do?

It is for US that they endure air conditioning; it is for US that they emit gargantuan carbon footprints as they flit about in their private jets. It is for US that they exempt themselves from things like IRS obligations or the rule of law in general. It is for US that they hold onto their firearms even as they try to disarm the little people.

Personally, I am honored that good liberals make such extreme sacrifices in order to ensure that I will be confined me in the pen of austerity that I deserve.

Le Cracquere| 7.7.10 @ 8:50AM

And the minute the AC units turn off everywhere, the depopulation of the South and Southwest begins in earnest, those areas' numbers & influence relative to the Northeast eventually dwindling to pre-WWII levels.

Not that the likes of Cox could POSSIBLY be counting on that, of course...

owyheewine| 7.7.10 @ 10:07AM

Actuall, out here in the west, we're just laughing out butts off at the dumbos that still think that living like rats all piled on top of each other in the East is a way to live.