Pearl River Weeks away from our global Beat the Heat Day, so-called heat domes in Europe recently and huge sections of the Midwest and northeast United States and Canada make it hard not to find ourselves in discussions about air conditioning. Going down dark holes on social media sites, it’s been interesting to see how many World Cup visitors from the UK and Europe comment on the existence and level of air conditioning in the USA.
The Washington Post reviewed the status of a/c under the current heat dome. They “found that about 3 million households in areas of major or extreme heat risk lack air conditioning. About 93 percent of homes have air conditioning nationwide, as do 96 percent of households in the areas with high heat risk…” They go deeper as well noting that…
In Michigan’s Wayne County, nearly 1-in-10 households — 63,115 — lack cooling, according to Census Bureau estimates. In Ohio’s Cuyahoga County, it’s 41,555 households, or about 7.5 percent. In New York’s Monroe County, 12 percent, or 38,923 households, lack air conditioning. In Detroit, where the heat index is forecast to hit 105 this week, an estimated 37,000 households — about 17 percent of the city — don’t have air conditioning. In some neighborhoods, as many as 1 in 5 homes lack cooling.
It goes without saying that these are largely the lower income neighborhoods and housing situations where our members live and where we have organized for years. These statistics don’t include homes that might have air conditioners, but aren’t using them or are using them only rarely in order to be able to pay their soaring electric utility bills, even while endangering their health, especially for the elderly.
Within ACORN our conversations underline the divergent in policy and cultural views on these subjects. In Toronto and other Canadian cities, we have won thousands of air conditioners for lower income tenants especially, as well as a maximum heat ordinance in New Westminster and cooling centers in buildings in Hamilton. In France, where the death count is over 1000 from their heat wave, air conditioning is politically divisive. The far right party has championed putting air conditioning in public buildings and schools, while the farther left party has only advocated shutters and fans. All of which leads to some head scratching in our discussions. One of our team almost went on a rant recently about the European advocacy of heat pumps as an environmental good wondering if they didn’t realize that the same pump not only handles heat in the winter but cooling in the summer.
In the US, health experts make the case that air conditioning is one of the proven public health measures we have to deal with extreme heat. In France, many believe that temperatures under 76 Fahrenheit are unhealthy. In the US and even more so in India, where our members are dealing with some temperatures approaching 50 degrees Celsius, the government has tried to intervene in manufacturing air conditioners to make sure they cannot be set below 65 Fahrenheit. In protecting the environment in the US, climate virtue signaling is when air conditioning in homes and offices is set at 75 and above. It’s a big, hot world!
Living in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast people have largely gone past this discussion, where modern home construction often would make areas unlivable, and even where homes were built to deal with tropical levels of heat. Without air conditioning at the least many months would be, how shall I say this, uncomfortable. Houses in the city that were built over 100 years ago with open hallways, large windows, shutters and more on a Caribbean model. In the 60s and 70s, I lived in houses where attic fans did the job, schools didn’t have a/c, and shorts in schools were forbidden. I had a disassembled attic fan in my shed forever. They hardly exist anymore.
That was then. This is now. Climate change is real. We have to adapt our built environment, as well as our personal and community ideologies sometimes. There’s no going back.