Courtesy of the New Press
Stan Cox didn't write Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer) on a whim. He's thought about, written about, and investigated these issues for decades. He explains:
"My concerns about air-conditioning built up over about the past twenty years, when I would find myself in neighborhoods—in Florida, Georgia, Kansas—in summer, and would find the yards, sidewalks, and parks devoid of all human life. It was a sharp contrast to the scene when I was growing up in Georgia, and neighbors, especially kids, would spend all day outdoors, together, all summer long. At the same time that the isolating effect of air-conditioning was becoming apparent to me (and, I assume, to others), we were all becoming aware of the threat of global warming. Here, air-conditioning seemed to play a pivotal role, since with hotter weather, we would be relying even more on air-conditioning, which, through increased fossil fuel and refrigerant use, would accelerate warming, creating even greater demand for air conditioning."
WATCH VIDEO: G-Word Online Clips: DIY Air Condition
Some of What I Learned from "Losing Our Cool"
- In the United States, electricity usage for residential air-conditioning has doubled in just twelve years.
- Air-conditioning is approaching 20 percent of year-round electricity consumption by U.S. homes, the highest percentage in history.
- With rising temperatures, global demand for air-conditioning is projected to rise 65 to 72 percent in the next four decades.
- Air-conditioning has been shown to help people in northern cities survive severe heat waves, but it has also been blamed for causing infections and increasing the rates of allergy, asthma, and obesity.
- Air-conditioning, along with electronic entertainment and other technologies, is responsible for Americans spending more time indoors than ever before.
- Six out of every seven gallons of diesel fuel U.S. forces haul into Iraq and Afghanistan are used to run air-conditioning.
My Conversation With Stan Cox
Planet Green: Was there a particular catalyst to you writing this book on this topic? Stan Cox: I wrote a couple of articles on the subject in 2006, and then, I think, I made the decision to write a book when, in response to the articles, a friend told me,
PG: Like what?
SC: We should think more in terms of people-cooling than of house-cooling. I am a big fan of fans, which allow us to be comfortable at much higher temperature and humidity levels. A whole-house exhaust fan can quickly replace warm indoor air with cooler evening air. In dry climates, evaporative (
PG: Is there a common thread in these ideas?
SC: In all of the above strategies and others, the most important systems requiring adjustment are ourselves. The
PG: What surprised you most while researching this book?
SC: I had thought of America as having been an air-conditioned nation for most of my adult life. So the very rapid escalation of energy use for cooling in recent years came as a big surprise to me. In just twelve years, from 1993 to 2005
PG: Did you sit in an air conditioned room while writing this book?
SC: No, I made sure not to do that! The house in Kansas where which my wife and I have lived for ten years has a central air unit, and we run it for one day each year, to be sure it
PG: What can Planet Green readers do—individually and collectively—to play a positive role in the re-shaping of our "air conditioned world"?
SC: I really did try to avoid making it a book about personal lifestyles; rather, I stress that we
