Giving up air conditioning?

I caught part of "On Point" (one of my favorite National Public Radio shows) the other day when they were talking about the bad aspects of air conditioning.

From the comments at the link above, a lot of people seem to get really upset at the thought of living without A/C. I think some have legitimate concerns; people with severe seasonal allergies benefit from ubiquitous air conditioning. But as some other commenters noted, do we really need so much of it? Couldn't we all survive at a little higher temperature?

We have central A/C in our house. We never use it. For all I know, it could be broken because we just don't turn it on. Admittedly, we live in Southern New England, which hardly ever gets extremely hot, but most of our neighbours run their A/C units all summer, so we are a bit unusual.

We don't particularly like A/C. We don't like the cost and we don't mind a little heat. We control it by drawing shades and blinds in the afternoon on the sun exposed side of the house - we have venetian blind, shades and drapes on each window. Most of the time it's quite comfortable. We draw drapes also when its really warm. You might be surprised at how much a difference just those actions can make. We use fans if it still isn't enough, and we get by. Usually there are one or two nights a year when sleeping is a little uncomfortable, but an extra fan beside the bed can help with that.

I think it helps that our home is well insulated. We bought a manufactured home in an over 55 community five years ago; I was really surprised at how well insulated these are.

I suspect it also helps that neither of us is overweight. Large people are going to have a harder time in heat than we are. They probably don't have to wear sweaters in the winter as we do, but when it's really, really hot, even going naked isn't going to help that much.

Though we do that too. Sheets and towels on the furniture and the shades and blinds are already drawn, so why not?

The radio show guest said that he expects to see a reverse migration of people moving back to Northern States. I think that might come to be, though more likely due to water shortages than A/C issues. If air conditioning use did fall off, there might be interesting demographics with larger and heavier people moving northward and skinnier and smaller folks taking their places in the South. But if water is the problem, the South could become very empty very quickly.

Writing this post made me curious, so I just now switched on the A/C. It works; in a very short time cold air was coming out the vents. I immediately developed a headache. That had to be purely psychological - I ran it for less than a minute!

How about you? Could you give up air conditioning? Do the environmental concerns worry you? Are you a hot cheapskate like me? Or are you a well cooled cucumber and plan on staying that way no matter what?

More environmental friendly A/C?

There is something new called "DevAP". This is supposed to save up to 90% of the energy now wasted with A/C. It accomplishes this without harmful chlorofluorocarbons, too. Apparently it requires so little electricity that solar power is quite possible - and if the sun isn't shining, it's usually not that hot, is it?

Yes, I know that a warm, sticky night can make for hard sleeping, so solar wouldn't be a complete answer. But this idea does sound promising for those of you who reacted to the title with absolute horror.

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