Pearl River Right this minute, I’m writing under an air conditioning vent with a general fan moving the air along as well. I just bade the repair man adieu minutes ago after having waited for him the last 24-hours. The problem was simple. A power surge had fried a fuse at the unit. For me, it was déjà vu all over again. I’d done the same thing a week ago. The problem then was a wire that had been weed wacked. Accidents do happen. This time it was more of a mystery. The fan was working, but the unit was not cooling. You notice these things in bayou and swamp land along the coast in the Mississippi and Louisiana wetlands when it’s 90 degrees Fahrenheit in the house even with fans galore, and going outside in the mornings and evenings in the high 70’s feels like relief, even if that temperature and the accompanying humidity would feel horrid elsewhere and in other states and countries.
The love of my life, feeling sorry for me for drawing this same straw two weeks in a row, offered to buy me one of those portable units that has an ungainly coil that discharges out of a window. I thanked her for her generosity, but told her that the last thing in life I wanted was another air conditioner. What I didn’t admit to her was the fact that with all the windows open and the ceiling fans going, it hadn’t been that bad living, working, and sleeping even with the air condice, as a long-valued comrade referred to such appliances, was on the fritz. I can remember growing up in the dry heat of the West and humidity of the South when the best on offer was window, ceiling, and attic fans. I didn’t like the waiting, but the heat itself all seemed like hundreds of camping trips in my past, except under a roof.
I’m not nostalgic about it, and I’m honest enough to say, air conditioning is preferable as an antidote to endless heat, even if I can handle some breaks, when they break. I’m also frank enough to concede that the energy requirements, though better now than they were, still are an environmental problem, even as they are a necessity for life in a warming planet. We live embedded in the contradiction.
We’re obviously not alone. ACORN is organizing a global “Beat the Heat” action along with many of our allies on July 23rd. This is a real issue for our members. Canada and India have led the way in taking this one with some wins already. France has coupled these demands for tenants in social housing with retrofit demands to make housing climate adaptable to now.
Even in the United Kingdom, despite its cooler and rainier reputation, heat is becoming an issue. A columnist in The Economist poked fun at his countrymen for pretending summers were not hot now, but were the cooler climes of their memories. He argued for air conditioning, staying to enjoy the beaches of England, and summering in-country. The heart of the argument, even tongue-in-cheek, was stop denying it’s hotter as the number of 30+ Celsius days increase, more breaks are given at Wimbledon, and heatwaves are so common that they are usual not news.
In the United States, Trump is now hiring scientists who question the climate consensus, trying to gut disaster relief, even as flooding and hurricane death totals surge, eviscerating climate incentives for solar energy, electric vehicles and destroying the Environmental Protection Agency. In short, Trump and his administration are now the poster child for climate denial. Who wants to join that team? If you’re not part of the solution, one way or another, you’re part of the problem.