![]() It is a technology so deeply embedded in our daily lives, and so increasingly important to our survival, that when we think of it, it is not with pleasure, as a luxury, or with pride, as an exemplar of our technical ingenuity. ![]() It’s possible to see a future in which we are dependent on the perfect, continuous performance of air conditioning the way many people are dependent on lifesaving drugs, planes are dependent on air traffic control, and a colony on the moon or Mars would be dependent on perpetual sources of oxygen and water. It’s no longer mentally associated with things such as toasters, refrigerators and televisions but instead with those often-invisible systems that we take for granted until they fail, such as the electrical grid or medical implants, pharmaceuticals and the blood supply. More fundamentally, air conditioning is evolving rapidly from an appliance that adds comfort and convenience to an ever-present life-support system. The effects are cumulative, and students without AC in their schools, who often live in cooler regions of the country, are the most vulnerable. A 2020 study predicted that if temperatures in the contiguous United States rise as predicted, by 2050 students will learn on average 10 percent less each year. Summers now last longer - well past the autumnal equinox in many places - and as hot weather spreads to more clement regions, schools must consider the effects on learning without air conditioning. Older Americans, who can still recall the preternatural cool of movie theaters as a rare escape from the tedious heat of summer, must now consider the physical stress of hot weather as a significant determinant of mortality. (Andrew Medichini/AP)īut even in places where air conditioning has been standard for decades, including the United States (where, according to the International Energy Agency, more than 90 percent of households have artificial cooling), how the technology intersects with fundamental feelings about safety and well-being is changing. Making internal spaces cooler for humans means making external environments hotter for all living things, with more industrial production, shipping and energy consumption, all of which contribute to the buildup of greenhouse gases.Īir conditioning units dot the facade of a building in Rome in July. The environmental costs are terrifying, too. But it isn’t just the financial challenge of manufacturing and distributing more cooling systems. And the cost of remedying that is staggering. Billions of people in the Global South and other hot zones still live without household air conditioning. ![]() In Europe, where air conditioning is evolving from an eccentric, American-style indulgence to a standard amenity, AC offered a critical defense against a heat wave so powerful and persistent that the Europeans gave the high-pressure system causing it a name, “Cerberus,” after the mythological three-headed hellhound who guards the gates of Hades.Īs temperature records were broken across the planet this summer, you could sense something shift in our relationship to air conditioning. In Phoenix, where the temperature rose above 110 degrees for weeks on end, temporary cooling centers were a lifesaver for homeless people, though hundreds of heat-related deaths were confirmed or suspected throughout the metropolitan area. In the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic, it offered defense against not just the heat but also the eerie orange smoke from Canadian wildfires exacerbated by climate change. ![]() This summer, all across the torrid globe, air conditioning was a necessity for billions of people, though less than a third of households have it.
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