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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Content: 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. Next Monday marks the 20 th anniversary of a tragic spell of brutal weather in Chicago that caused more than 700 heat-related deaths within a single week. Among the most affected were the impoverished elderly, who either had no AC units or could not afford to use them. Advertisement
But for comfortably climate-controlled members of the brrr-geoisie, February must seem far more deadly than July. It’s a function of the climate where they live. In New York City, winters are unlivable while summers merely suck.