It’s seems to be a yearly rite of passage, where some outlet complains about AC at this time of the year, and it’s certainly not the first The Atlantic article that does this over the years
As a heat wave spreads across America, the whirring of air conditioners follows close behind. AC has become an American necessity—but at what cost?
First, here are three new stories from The Atlantic:
A single piece of technology has made recent heat waves safer and more bearable than they’d be otherwise. The trusty air conditioner doesn’t just cool us off—it has shaped the way we live in America, my colleague Rebecca J. Rosen wrote in The Atlantic in 2011. AC changed home design and reoriented workdays; it even arguably influenced the way that Congress operates, by expanding the legislative calendar into the summer. Robust at-home cooling helped make living in fast-growing regions such as the Southwest more appealing—and that region has reshaped American politics and life. (One author even credits AC with getting Ronald Reagan elected.)
It wasn’t always this way. In the early 20th century, AC was generally reserved for public spaces; around 1940, well under 1 percent of American homes had AC. But in the decades that followed, the technology found its way into more households. By 2001, about 77 percent of homes had AC. Now some 90 percent of American homes use air-conditioning, according to a 2020 federal-government survey. AC was once seen by many Americans as a nice-to-have, rather than a necessity. But in recent decades, Americans have experienced an attitude shift: Pew polling found that in 2006, 70 percent of people considered AC a necessity, compared with about half who viewed it that way a decade earlier. And the country has only gotten hotter since then.
Well, having a modern lifestyle with modern conveniences is progress, right? Most people couldn’t afford a computer in the Reagan era: now everyone has one, it seems, including a phone that can do an amazing amount of things.
The environmental cost of air-conditioning puts users in an impossible predicament. The United Nations warned last year that global energy used for cooling could double by 2050, and that it could make up 10 percent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions at that point. At least until more efficient cooling is widespread, AC will contribute to the rising heat that makes it essential.
Does anyone want to bet that The Atlantic has an AC in its office(s)? How about Warmist Lora Kelley? AC at home? Turns it on in the car? How about all the Warmists who read the article and said “yeah, AC is bad”: have they shut theirs off?
Read: Right On Schedule, The Atlantic Whines About Other People Using Air Conditioning »
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