By Asher Miller, Rob Dietz, Jason Bradford, Resilience.org
For such tame technology, air conditioning really packs a punch when it comes to enabling environmental obscenities, indefensible infrastructure, and shortsighted settlement patterns.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Prior to the invention of air-conditioning, architects had to figure out ways to keep people cool and ventilated through design rather than through the action of refrigerants and compressors.
By Stan Cox, Resilience.org
The severe heat is driving almost all social gatherings and group activities into enclosed, air-conditioned spaces. Getting together these days in the cool indoor world can dramatically raise the risk of coronavirus infection.
By Kurt Cobb, Resource Insights
Qatar is both a country and a peninsula which juts out about 100 miles into the Persian Gulf. It is precisely this geography which makes it both one of the hottest and muggiest places on Earth. The average daily high in mid-summer is 108 degrees F (42 degrees C).
By Stan Cox, Green Social Thought
Phillips, like many AC fans before him, falls back on the sly trope that all “attacks” on air-conditioning are motivated by an “obsession with individual asceticism.” No, they’re not.
By Justine Calma, Grist
Improving cooling center signage and generally making the facilities more inviting is part of New York City’s $106-million “Cool Neighborhoods” plan, launched last year to mitigate the health risks of extreme heat.
By Rick Barnett, Connect4Climate
A new possibility for near-term abatement involves heat/cool energy, the only type of consumption that’s unaffected by growing demand for electronic technology. In addition to cutting carbon, less air conditioning also cuts the use of chlorinated refrigerants.
By Erik Lindberg, Transition Milwaukee
As I learned in graduate-school, the legitimate fear of change and the unknown expressed in each case is, more significantly, working at the same time to protect some form of unacknowledged and unseen privilege.
By Kris De Decker, Low-Tech Magazine
Cooling people by increasing local airflow is at least ten times more energy efficient than refrigerating the air in a given space, and it also adds the benefit of a personally controlled thermal environment.