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Few things in life, besides a glass of water when you are crossing the desert, offer as much immediate relief as air conditioning.
You’re boiling outside, you pull open a door, you step into a paradise of 68-degree air, and your body all but screams “Hallelujah!”
In years past, businesses used to boast that their confines were chilled. Movie marquees used to promote “manufactured weather!” Roadside motels would flash “A.C.” in neon. Restaurants, banks, department stores, all happily bragged that they were cool - in the literal sense of the word.
It was like the flip side on that old Christmas song. Baby, it’s cold inside.
But these days, cold air has become a hot topic. As heat waves swelter much of the world, particularly Europe, “air conditioning” is now, as cowboys used to say, fightin’ words.
Some advocates say air conditioners can save lives, pointing to the many (avoidable) heat-related deaths of infants and the elderly.
Others say air conditioners are killing the planet, due to their high carbon footprint.
And then there’s France, who says, “It’s America’s fault.”
We’re not kidding. According to Paris Deputy Mayor Audrey Pulvar, America has too much air conditioning, which puts out too much greenhouse gas, which raises the global temperature, which is part of why France is so hot this summer. So, merci beaucoup, USA!
“You bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing,” Pulvar posted on Instagram. “Your cities ‘90% air-conditioned’ are not unrelated to this. In Paris, we take responsibility.”
Maybe. But for some reason, Ms. Pulvar’s indignance did not mention China, which puts out more than twice the greenhouse gas emissions of America, yet has no carbon footprint restrictions before 2030 under the Paris Climate Agreement, which, last I looked, was agreed to in, uh, Paris.
And by the way, most of the world’s air conditioners are made in, wait for it …
China.
Now it’s true, we Americans take our air conditioning seriously. We don’t like sweating indoors, particularly at work. We are concerned about being efficient, staying awake, and not testing the outer limits of our deodorant.
France, on the other hand, sees individual air conditioners as gauche (a French word) and indulgent (an English one). Rather than use all that electricity, they believe it is better to sweat through your shirt, breeze yourself with a green-friendly fan, or fall asleep in a daze at your desk.
No wonder they want a four-day workweek.
It’s an American thing
Recently, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani caused a ruckus when he suggested that, to fight the city’s power drain during this blistering summer, New Yorkers set their thermostats to 78 degrees.
He was immediately blasted as a radical, a communist, and anti-American. Then again, for Mamdani, that’s just another weekday.
But the story shows how seriously we take being cool. With 90% of American homes now air conditioned, it’s pretty tough to ask people to voluntarily turn it down and sweat it out.
But it’s worth remembering that as late as the 1960s, only 10% of U.S. homes had AC.
The battle between having the “cool” technology and using it rages on. Data shows that if everyone in France shut off their air conditioning, it still wouldn’t have much effect on global warming.
If everyone in America did the same, it would be more significant, but that’s never going to happen - no matter how much lecturing we get from the rest of the world.
Yes, I’m sure many Europeans would suggest Americans deal with the heat by simply ignoring it. But as Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones once said, “If you gotta think about being cool, you’re not.”
We know the difference.