Turn off the AC, turn on the bad times

As the northeast suffers through a July heat wave, the WaPo publishes an op-ed by the author of a book about how bad air conditioning is for us.

A.C.’s obvious public-health benefits during severe heat waves do not justify its lavish use in everyday life for months on end. Less than half a century ago, America thrived with only the spottiest use of air conditioning. It could again. While central air will always be needed in facilities such as hospitals, archives and cooling centers for those who are vulnerable to heat, what would an otherwise A.C.-free Washington look like?

In Stan Cox’s world, turning off the AC would bring us a fairy world of offices closing down for siestas and long summer breaks, laundry will be dried on clothes lines instead of dryers, cooking will be done on grills, not stoves, people leave their stuffy apartments in high crime areas and all stand or sit around outside, looking out for each other. Kids ride their bikes outside, heat-related deaths decline sharply, and I’m pretty sure unicorns fly around cities, dropping cotton candy on all the happy, bike-riding children.

Rather than cowering alone in chilly home-entertainment rooms, neighbors get to know one another. Because there are more people outside, streets in high-crime areas become safer. As a result of all this, a strange thing happens: Deaths from heat decline. Elderly people no longer die alone inside sweltering apartments, too afraid to venture outside for help and too isolated to be noticed. Instead, people look out for one another during heat waves, checking in on their most vulnerable neighbors.

Let me interject a bit of reality into this fantasy world.

Most of us work in stuffy offices that would be insufferable if you turned off the AC and opened the windows on a normal summer day. Work would not get done. Cox thinks that losing our three-piece suits would make us super productive, or something, because then we’d be able to relate to one another as people, instead of coworkers. Sure. As people, we would fall over with heat prostration. As people, we’d get awfully grumpy in the heat and extremely nonproductive. Somehow, Stan Cox seems to forget that in cities, most people work in multi-story buildings, and, dare I even point out, skyscrapers. Just imagine being on the fortieth floor and having to deal with the heat radiating up from the streets of New York. Sure, open a window. Then jump out of it for the cool breeze you’d get on the way down.

The same scenario goes for people living in apartment buildings, and that goes triple for those living in high-crime areas. We’ve already seen what heat waves cause: Crime waves. And say, does anyone remember that blackout in NYC in 1977? The one with all the looting? That was fun, let’s have another! Oh, wait. We did. That was fun, too!

I lived in apartments without air conditioning until 1969. The third floor apartment was the best. I remember barely being able to sleep, even with fans blowing the air around, and even being only ten or eleven years old. Good times! Can’t wait to have that happen now that I live in hot, humid Richmond, Virginia. Because what Cox doesn’t take into account are the different climates throughout the nation. Virginia summers, just like Washington’s, are nearly always muggy. He envisions Congress shutting down and politicians going home for the summer. Where do I go to get away from the heat? What about the residents of the desert states? Should they just be thankful that it’s a dry heat, and only turn on the AC during heat waves?

Which brings us to the biggest bunch of b.s. in his entire op-ed:

Elderly people no longer die alone inside sweltering apartments, too afraid to venture outside for help and too isolated to be noticed.

I think he’s confusing us with France during the summer of 2003 (14,802 heat-related deaths). Or maybe the Netherlands (1,500 heat-related deaths). We haven’t had anything like that since Chicago, 1995—and Chicago hasn’t had anything like that since. The thing about Americans is we learn from our mistakes.

The total number of heat-related deaths in the U.S. from 1999 to 2003 was 3,442, according to the CDC.

Fairyland. That’s where Cox wants us to live. Hey, I’d like to live there, too. Unfortunately, I live in the real world. I won’t be turning off my air conditioning until the temperature outside gets a hell of a lot cooler. My guess is October, if this weather continues as it’s been going.