Title: Air conditioning energy: AC saves lives and causes less climate change than heating.
Headings: Hot and Bothered
Hot and Bothered
Air conditioning isn’t bad for you or even (relatively) for the planet.
By Daniel Engber
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Yet the Times op-ed doesn’t stop at claiming that AC makes us unproductive. It also alleges that too much cooling turns us “untrusting, uncommunicative, and unfriendly.” There’s a hint of truth in this: Research on what is sometimes called “embodied cognition” has found that temperature cues (an ice pack on your hand, a heating pad on your chair, a cold or hot beverage in your hand) can make a person slightly more or less inclined to seek out social contact or inclusion. But the nature and magnitude of this effect varies quite a bit, depending on such factors as the mood and situation of the subject and her baseline personality. What’s more, there’s plenty of other evidence linking hot weather to expressions of mental illness. A recent study of several decades’ worth of suicide data from Toronto and Jackson, Mississippi, found that people were more likely to kill themselves during heat waves. Advertisement
The latter fact reveals that the squabble over air conditioning isn’t just about one’s social status and affiliation. It’s a matter of public health. Heat waves kill at least as readily as cold, causing hundreds of deaths every year in the United States.