It’s a cruel, cruel summer
On the calendar, autumn started in the Northern Hemisphere this year on a typical date — September 23. But throughout much of the world, it will still feel like summer for weeks to come. According to the federal government, we just had the hottest summer since the government began recording that data in 1880, and the five hottest summers on record have occurred over the past five years.
Unwittingly, in our efforts to thrive and survive through increasingly long, hot summers, we have created a vicious cycle that exacerbates the problem. It’s a perfect example of how our beloved creature comforts, which keep growing in number, can cause more problems than they solve.
Extreme heat isn’t just uncomfortable. It can be dangerous — even deadly. A recent New York Times article pointed out a sharp increase in heat-related deaths in two of the hottest states, Nevada and Arizona, and noted that:
The long-term health effects of rising temperatures and heat waves are expected to be one of the most dangerous consequences of climate change, causing “tens of thousands of additional premature deaths per year across the United States by the end of this century,” according to the federal government’s Global Change Research Program. The effect could be even more severe in other parts of the world, potentially making parts of North Africa and the Middle East “uninhabitable.”
The article cited air conditioning as a factor in lowering the number of heat-related deaths. Ironically, the dramatic increase in air conditioning over the past half-century may be a factor in those deaths as well.
Throughout history, we’ve used ingenuity to increase our quality of life and save lives. But too often, the resources and methods we’ve used have engendered adverse unintended consequences.
When I was a small child in the 1970s, very few homes or larger buildings had central air conditioning. Air conditioning generally came from window-mounted units in specific rooms. In other rooms and in buildings without AC, people left their windows open, turned fans on and drank cold drinks to stave off the heat, with mixed results.
I vividly remember sweating through brutally hot summer nights while trying in vain to sleep at my grandparents’ house in Queens. On those overnight visits, my brother and I would share our mom’s childhood bedroom, which had a wall unit. Usually, we first would open the windows, but often the air that entered the house was even more oppressive than the stifling air already inside. Many a night, after closing the windows in resignation and then turning the AC on full-blast, we fell asleep on the floor as a cold, electrically generated breeze washed over us.
Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, central AC became the standard in new builds and renovations. To provide a supply of cold air, these systems used a refrigerant known as freon. (Spoiler alert! Here come those adverse unintended consequences.)
By 1994, freon was linked to ozone depletion and banned in several countries. So scientists developed new refrigerants to replace freon. Unfortunately, those modern refrigerants are full of the organic compound hydrofluorocarbon (HFC), which we now know is a much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. On top of that, electricity generated by fossil fuels still powers most homes and businesses, despite the increasing popularity of renewable energy.
As a result of our transition to a high-tech and service-based economy, people increasingly spend more time indoors, and prioritize comfort. So, during the warmer months, more people turn on their air conditioners, emit more greenhouse gases at home and get more coal- and oil-derived power from their local utilities. Those emissions make it even hotter, year after year, requiring more AC for the same effect. While comfort has value, it’s a problem when our means to that end degrades the environment.
That means we have to make some tough choices. We can grin and bear (and sweat) the warm and even hot temperatures, only using AC during extreme heat. We can use lower-tech, low- or no-carbon alternatives, such as weatherizing our homes or pulling down the blinds to keep the midday sun out. We can power our air conditioning with renewable sources to cut way back on their emissions.
I like using the air conditioning as much as anyone. But I love having all four seasons, and I want my children to have the option of experiencing that their whole lives. We can’t keep going on the path we’re on, or we’re in for a lot of cruel summers ahead.
