I worry that this interview with author Stan Cox about his bookLosing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) might not get through to people. And the reason is that Cox drifts a little too far into the sanctimonious zone about air conditioning, talking about how he never, ever uses it if he’s in control, and focusing his energies on talking about people who’ve given up on air conditioning, even when they live in super hot climates. And doing that thing people do, where they drift off into refusing to admit there could ever be any value to the thing they’re trying to get people to give up, like how he gets into scientifically iffy territory of suggesting that people would have fewer allergies if they didn’t use A/C and got out more. (I suspect the rise in allergic people compared to the past has more to do with the fact that we can keep them alive now, whereas in the past they would have died from the flu or tuberculosis at a young age.) When it comes to environmentalism, there’s a real danger in taking an absolutist position, which is that people will tune you out completely, since they find that impossible.
Which is too bad, because on the whole, Cox is right. Air conditioning is one of the great environmental disasters of our time. It’s way overused, and to make it worse, it allowed people to build bigger houses and public buildings on the grounds that they could cool them off pretty easily, and it discouraged the use of more energy efficient ways to cool off your home. It’s created cultural acclimation of the sort where people will never accept anything less than air conditioning, even when opening a window would actually be just as good. Believe me, I know. This has been the ongoing war of my adult life. I grew up in the Southwest—-interestingly, my family’s migration there has a lot to do with the problem of allergies and the attempts to avoid them rather than die of respiratory illness—-and out there, they don’t really use the same kind of air conditioning that you see in many places. (Though that’s changing rapidly—-air conditioning is such a status symbol that it’s being installed even where it’s not necessary.) We had evaporation cooling in most homes, which isn’t something that works as well in more humid environments. Subsequently, when I moved to Austin and started to have to live with for-real air conditioning, I hated it. I still hate it. I like cooling off in the A/C, due to being human, and I’ll run it rather than sit around sweating. But I’ve always been one of those people who waits until the last possible minute to flick it on, and then I sigh sadly, because I don’t look forward to having all the natural humidity in the air and my nostrils sucked out. As you can imagine, the vast majority of people I encounter disagree strongly with this strategy. I can have some effect on choosing windows and fans over A/C, but the compromise position always falls short of my “wait until there’s no other possible way to get the temperature below 90” strategy that I employed when I lived alone.
Because of all this, I think that a much better strategy for dramatically reducing A/C use is to avoid the cold turkey arguments, and start talking about how to remake our culture so A/C is a last, not first, ditch effort. From my war on A/C, I’d say that in many places, you could cut it by 70% with a few small adjustments to our cultural expectations of what temperature a room should be, and by getting people to consider taking many steps to cool off before resorting to the A/C, such as wearing fewer clothes at home, opening windows, using fans, building in places where there’s shade, drawing curtains, shutting doors to rooms you’re not using instead of air conditioning the whole house, etc.* Right now, for instance, I’m looking into buying some boxer shorts to wear around the house instead of the pajama pants I usually wear. That will buy me at least an hour or two more a day where I don’t resort to the A/C. I do think there’s value to pointing out the physical discomforts of A/C, but this process is going to take a lot of hand-holding. The belief that every place should have A/C on at full blast has just become so ingrained, as only someone who gets super cold and uncomfortable in full blast A/C (ahem) can really tell you.
Once you set out, as a president or a party, to propagate a message that the government has (or is) the panacea for all ills, then failure to deal with an ill leads to your being hoist with your own panacea-petard. If the entire range of your political program rests on the message that the government is the problem-solver, the deliverer from evil, the Messiah, the curative current that runs through our civitas, then a failure to solve a problem, to deliver from evil—or from an evil oil spill—leads to consternation, bafflement, and profound disillusion in the ranks of the faithful.
Actually, the thing that’s lumping responsibility onto Obama isn’t the belief that government can solve all ills; it’s his embrace of offshore drilling and his sorta but not quite “moratorium” on drilling. Yes, there are some people who think Obama should rush in and…do…something? Use his supernatural powers over black gold, maybe? The problem isn’t a belief that the regulatory state can solve all ills and it hasn’t; the problem is that the actual role the regulatory state has is being approached in a half-hearted manner.
There’s also the nontrivial matter of what happens going forward: it’s almost certain that there will be massive legislative and judicial fights over BP’s liability, and the same people who’ve spent years saying that legitimate, undeniable corporate malfeasance has to be balanced against all the shiny things corporations make will pile on Obama, saying simultaneously that he has to crack down, but in a way that still sends a positive message to the oil industry, but in a way that punishes BP, but in a way that takes into account their efforts, but in a way that…
Obama’s main problem is not big government versus small government or statism versus corporatism, it’s his political willingness to stay in yet another fight with the same political opposition that will fight anything he does.
Jay,I wouldn’t call Friedman’s latest piece “good”, in the sense that it’s still incoherently written and full of just weird ideas. Such as his belief that the only way to slow population growth is abstinence, getting right into the Village and the Hill’s ongoing pact to pretend that no one invented reliable contraception. Or the fact that he says this:
My argument is simple: I think climate change is real. You don’t? That’s your business.
Later, he talks up how people who don’t think it’s real will rue it, and they’re wrong, but really, this is just a bad foot to start off on. It puts the existence of global warming into the “belief” category, when it’s much more in the realm of facts. We need to get away from using the term “belief” so that people can get undue respect for their bullshit, not run towards it. But this post is not about the pleasurable sport of picking on Thomas Friedman for being a bad writer. No, within his garbled prose, Friedman has a point. Sort of. He argues that exploding population will drive up oil prices, so we need energy independence. I would point out that even if we achieve non-growth, oil prices are going to go up, because oil reserves are going to go down. That’s the supply/demand thing you hear so much about.
Now, I can already hear a bunch of wingnuts mocking me as a “peak oil” nut. And what that tells you is that the lovers of oil dependency have grown beyond denying global warming, but have moved on to denying that oil is a non-renewable resource. Perhaps they believe that a team of angels and elves live underground and piss out pure oil, so of course we’ll never run out. But I’ve already gone rounds in comments and offline with conservatives that outright deny that there’s any concern about oil reserves lasting, so we’re already onto that stage of desperation. Remember, these are people that would deny the reality of gravity if doing so was politically expedient.
Plus, people plain forget where oil comes from in all the political hay made over this. I was listening to a morning DJ show while driving years ago, and they were talking about oil dependency and the war. And one of the DJs suggested that we go to Mars and look for oil there. I tensed up, because I could hear the sound of a million morons nodding along, but thankfully, the other DJ said, “Um, do you remember where oil comes from?” And then, after a beat, the first one said, “Oh yeah. Dead dinosaurs.”
Sure, it’s an oversimplification of the issue, but it’s important to remember exactly what it means when you call something a non-renewable resource. Unless you have a secret stash of dead dinosaurs coming to save us all.
I just wanted to highlight this post by Ezra linking an article about the joys of biking. We’ve had a very green week in my household—-all in one day, I sold my truck and we picked up a bicycle that Marc got for his birthday. Talking to the lady at the bike shop, I discovered that they are overwhelmed right now with more sales than their suppliers can keep up with. Sales have apparently tripled in a year. I was struck by how the oil crisis, if it doesn’t complete overwhelm this country, could actually have positive benefits for our sedentary society. Anyway, I won’t belabor the point. I’ve already praised bicycle commuting as more fun than car commuting to the point of tedium.
So this post won’t be a complete waste of your time, a video from Mika Miko:
“Look, just don’t try to sell me any gimmicks. Just give me the rocket engines.”
“Sir, you’re at Jiffy Lube. We do oil changes. We can change out some other fluids, your filters, your windshield wipers. We don’t have rocket engines.”
“Fuck you. And fuck. Your stupid. Face. I paid my $26, I want my rocket engines. I’m a recovering alcoholic, you know.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, sir, but I can’t give you rocket engines. They don’t actually exist, for one.”
“They exist. They exist. You know how I know they exist? Because if they didn’t exist, how would I be able to ask for them and you know what I was asking you about? Hm? Hmmmmm? Man, I could use a drink, but I won’t get one because I’m a recovering alcoholic. You pay attention to me! I’m being charmingly self-effacing here.”
“Rockets exist…and they have engines. But that doesn’t mean that rocket engines for your car exist.”
“So does my car not exist? Does it? Put the fucking engines on, bitch!”
“Sir, I’m going to have to ask you-”
“To give a stirring motivational standup act about my alcoholism? Because there was one time I got my penis stuck in a bottle of Jaegermeister after…don’t you look away from me. Unless it’s towards rocket engines, for my car, that you will put on, because I paid you twenty six American dollars.”
“Let me get my manager.”
“You do that. You’re unmanageable. Just unmanageable.”
How not to successfully suck up for the veep position. With gas prices on the minds of most Americans, Mittster (or his handlers) didn’t do any homework to tout McCain’s wisdom and efforts on energy policy. Way to go!
WOLF BLITZER: Can you cite one legislative accomplishment that Senator McCain produced during those 26 years in Washington in order to achieve energy independence?
GOVERNOR ROMNEY: Well, I’m not a historian that goes through all of the pieces of legislation John McCain has worked on.
Come on, man. That’s feeble. But that he readily admits that he’s not a historian…or a mayor… or a legislator…or a scientist…or an engineer either. Read all about it after the jump.
So, as a part of what’s apparently their new Funny All The Time strategy, the McCain campaign has custom-made tire gauges with Obama’s name on them available for a twenty-five dollar donation. It would probably help if it wasn’t one of the most effective ways available to every American to conserve fuel and lower gas costs, though.
It would really seem as if you wouldn’t want to make your opponent’s good idea a part of your campaign strategy except…oh, wait, I forgot - it’s a ridiculously elitist and out-of-touch thing to do to get on your hands and knees and work on a part of your car in order to save money. Shoot me in the fucking face, please.
I worry that this interview with author Stan Cox about his book Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) might not get through to people. And the reason is that Cox drifts a little too far into the sanctimonious zone about air conditioning, talking about how he never, ever uses it if he’s in control, and focusing his energies on talking about people who’ve given up on air conditioning, even when they live in super hot climates. And doing that thing people do, where they drift off into refusing to admit there could ever be any value to the thing they’re trying to get people to give up, like how he gets into scientifically iffy territory of suggesting that people would have fewer allergies if they didn’t use A/C and got out more. (I suspect the rise in allergic people compared to the past has more to do with the fact that we can keep them alive now, whereas in the past they would have died from the flu or tuberculosis at a young age.) When it comes to environmentalism, there’s a real danger in taking an absolutist position, which is that people will tune you out completely, since they find that impossible.
How 
So, as a part of what’s apparently their new Funny All The Time strategy, the McCain campaign has custom-made tire gauges with Obama’s name on them available for