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A summer without AC? It's possible
An energy efficient air conditioner for sale.
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TEXT OF INTERVIEW
Kai Ryssdal: Last week's crazy triple-digit East Coast heatwave is just a memory now. New York is a relatively sane 92 degrees today. Of course, that still has air conditioners pegged at maximum cool, and it's the same in other parts of the country, too. It doesn't have to be a 100 degrees for us to hit the AC to be comfortable. Not all that long ago we all survived just fine without conditioning the air.
In his new book, "Losing Our Cool" author Stan Cox says air conditioning's actually made us worse off. Stan, welcome to the program.
Stan Cox: Good to be with you.
Ryssdal: Do I have it right that you survived Kansas summers with no air conditioning in your house?
Cox: That's right. Our house does have central air conditioning system. We turn it on for one day a year to make sure it's still in good working order.
Ryssdal: Is that a day of celebration and happiness in your house or do you do it reluctantly?
Cox: We usually time it for when people are coming over to dinner or we have out of town visitors.
Ryssdal: This book you have written is very much a proposal that we should just figure out a way to do without it. Or certainly do less of it.
Cox: I knew that if I wrote a book calling for the prohibition of air conditioning I wouldn't get very far with most people. So what I've tried to do instead is paint a picture of what life might be like if we start reducing our dependence on it.
Ryssdal: Give me some sense of the raw number. How much energy do we use to keep ourselves cool and comfortable?
Cox: Well, the number is approaching a half trillion kilowatt hours per year, which doesn't mean a lot unless you think of it as the entire electricity consumption of all 60 nations of the continent of Africa -- almost a billion people per year for everything. We could also compare it to renewable energy -- solar, wind, biomass, geothermal. Those sources could increase five fold and still would not cover our demand for air conditioning in this country.
Ryssdal: Are we doing air conditioning any smarter than we did in the past? I mean, have we taken advantage of technology to at least use less energy per degree of cooling or however it's measured?
Cox: Well, that in fact has been improved significantly compared with the mid-90s. The efficiency of residential air conditioners that are in use has increased 28 percent. But at the same time, the average air conditioned home is using 37 percent more electricity for cooling -- which seems like a paradox, until you think about the fact that houses have gotten much bigger and that a lot of people have switched from say, room air conditioning to central air and are probably keeping their houses cooler.
Ryssdal: You know, if you walk down the street in the summer time in most of Los Angeles, certainly New York City and I'd bet there in Salinas, Kan. where you are and everybody's got their air conditioning on. There are no people out there, right? There's nobody with windows open sitting on the porch anymore. You lose a certain social aspect of this, because of AC, don't you?
Cox: That was one of the chief reasons I wrote the book was the ill ease I felt in going through neighborhoods that I knew had once been very lively places in the summer and then turned into dead zones. You would not see any human life out there, and the only sound would be the compressors and fans on the air conditioners. And I really do believe that what has been called by one author "nature deficit disorder" is a problem that has been facilitated by air conditioning. You can make a dark home entertainment center with cool, still, dry air a lot more appealing than a meadow, say, in summer.
Ryssdal: Stan Cox. His most recent book is called, "Losing Our Cool." Stan, thanks a lot.
Cox: Thank you, Kai.
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Janet Halley in Milwaukee probably has a better sense of relative safety in her town than Lori Cart in Montreal. But Janet, I think you should consider a few things before writing off open windows. First, an easy solution to break-ins (and often required even if the windows are closed) are bars over windows for the lower two or three floors. Second, even though you know Milwaukee better than Lori does, I would guess she's right to some degree about your fears being exaggerated by media reports. For example, you talk about children being abducted--that's such a phenomenally rare event, even though the nightly news would have you think that half the children in the country had been abducted at some point. Sadly, lots of kids are indeed abducted, but 99% of the time they're abducted by a family member, for example the parent who doesn't have legal custody. Strangers coming in windows to abduct children happens once every blue moon, but then the story runs on the news for weeks and gets turned into a TV movie special and laws are named after the kid and the whole thing starts to look much bigger than it really is.
Finally, and most importantly, fear of crime and withdrawl into hermetically sealed interiors only promotes more crime. One reason criminals can get away with what they do is that so many people stay indoors. No one is on the streets keeping an eye on things, telling kids who are on the edge of getting into trouble to behave themselves, the whole "it takes a village" thing. When people open their windows and, more importantly, spend time on their stoops, the mere fact of their being there prevents crime. I don't mean to say it's an easy thing to turn around 30 years of shift into the indoors and away from shared public community space, but if you and your neighbors can find a way to start, you will see that it becomes easier (and safer) the more you do it.
You have got to be kidding Milwaukee! Your going to lock yourself away from society because of crime! the news mediums sensationalism of crime has alienated society from itself. In fact, you can be attacked going down your street if someone was so inclined to do you harm. Furthermore, certain crimes are more likely to be perpetrated by people that are known to them, more so than by strangers. I am a single woman living in Montreal, a place with not only a higher population, but also a higher density, and I not feel the need to lock myself away as you obviously do, Janet. My suggestion to you go outside and get to know your neighbours, talk to them, and let them get to know you. Form a strong community so that you can feel safer and are able to find help if you ever are in need.
I'm sorry,but there is no possible way we can have out windows open at night because of the crime. Too many rapists, robbers,and killers slip in through unsecured windows and screens. the most part of our country. I can't help but think of the children abducted from their homes at night and murdered.Let's be realistic,those days are over.
My electric bill runs under $25 per month, and I leave my French doors open to porches, and cross breezes that give a continual massage. Bird songs, not clanking ductwork, sing me to sleep nights. I designed a house without air-conditioning like the Florida houses I knew as a child or like the one in Bangkok where I needed a wool blanket on summer nights. These tropical houses that don’t need air-conditioning let hot air rise to 10' high ceilings and exit transoms above windows or doors. Porches and overhangs shade the windows. A long south side warms the house in winter.
My hot water heater and my clothes-dryer are solar. From my washing machine in its cabinet on the back porch, I hang clothes across on the line facing the trees and the birds in the yard.
But I hardly ever see a neighbor. A retired safety consultant for a Florida police department said that with air-conditioning came an uptick in crime. People no longer sat on their front porches.
Since I started biking in hot Atlanta weather I feel much colder in air conditioned rooms, as my body readjusted to the reality around it. We became alienated from our environment and, in the process, we started destroying it. Makes perfect sense to me.
OK, I understand when the temperature outside is 95F with 100% humidity. What is very puzzling to me is why I cannot see even one window open throughout my neighborhood in the great days of spring/fall when the temperature is a perfect 75F with no humidity whatsoever...
Interesting premise, but try living in Houston, Texas, where the temperature is up in the 90's past midnight. What cool air are we supposed to be pulling into our houses again?
And, yeah, urban development has a lot to do with it; love how the asphalt stores the heat during the day and then gives it off in the night. If only there were a way to harness all of the excess heat...
The timing on this segment couldn't have been more ironic! I heard this on my way home to inspect the AC unit my husband insisted on having installed. I have survived the last 40 years in Reno, NV with no central air conditioning and am embarrassed to have it on my home now. I have always managed the heat by opening up the windows at night and using fans to pull in the cool night air. With a huge increase in open-window break-ins, my husband is concerned for our safety, so we are forced into it. I will miss seeing my neighbors walking by.
Without window air conditioners and then later central whole house units there would have been little if any economic growth in the area I live. Before A/C in the time period of 1900 to the 1950�s this was a very small southern town with the only outside influence being that of all branches of the US military establishing bases in a 30 square mile area. Today it will be 94 degrees with 100% humidity all day. As a native I can contest that one never ever gets use to the heat. We save money and the earth�s resources in the winter down here by wearing more clothes. God bless you Willis Haviland Carrier! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willis_Carrier
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