Environmentalists Want You to Be Unhappy

By Andrew Follett

Saturday, September 07, 2024

 

Powerful environmentalists want you to be sweaty, miserable, poor, and unfree in the name of saving the planet. Just look at how they talk about two of the wonders of the modern world: air conditioning and refrigeration.

 

“When it gets too hot, we lightly spray water on our arms, legs and faces; the water helps dissipate a lot of heat,” a New York Times essay by Stan Cox, the author of an anti-air-conditioning book creatively titled “I Swore Off Air-Conditioning, and You Can Too” suggests as an alternative to modern air-conditioning technology. Cox also advocates restricting dishwashers and even refrigeration, all in the name of adapting to global warming.

 

Naturally, the essay minimizes the negative consequences or trade-offs entailed by forgoing air conditioning and other modern conveniences. Its central arguments — that air conditioning is unsustainable because it produces greenhouse gases and that humans are naturally capable of withstanding higher temperatures — are both ridiculous. Any reduced global warming from avoiding air conditioning would be so small as to be undetectable — and vastly less noticeable than the delightful chill of a cooled room.

 

As for whether humans can and should endure higher temperatures when they don’t have to, note that the New York Times spends a great deal of effort panicking over the perils of global temperatures rising by four to seven degrees Fahrenheit by the end of the century, but dismisses the possibility that people might want to cool a room by dozens of degrees. When environmentalists discuss global warming, they frame every degree of increased temperature as extremely detrimental. But when discussing air conditioning, they talk about warmer temperatures as just a matter of inconvenience that can be adjusted to simply by redefining normal. That’s because reality isn’t really the point for environmentalists; self-flagellation is.

 

“Our species evolved, biologically and culturally, under wildly varying climatic conditions, and we haven’t lost that ability to adapt,” Cox asserts. “Research suggests that when we spend more time in warm or hot summer weather, we can start feeling comfortable at temperatures that once felt insufferable. That’s the key to reducing dependence on air-conditioning: The less you use it, the easier it is to live without it.”

 

This simply isn’t true. Using less air conditioning is often literally lethal, as even Cox must admit. Air conditioning is a lifesaving and essential technology, preventing an estimated 18,000 deaths annually in the U.S. alone. Summer heat waves in areas without as much air conditioning as Americans enjoy can be horrifically deadly affairs. For example, heat waves are estimated to have killed over 70,000 Europeans in summer 2022. Any attempt to scale back air conditioning in the name of global warming would kill vastly more humans than a slight increase in the global thermostat in a century will.

 

Air conditioning not only saves lives, but also massively enhances human productivity. It “changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics,” Lee Kuan Yew, the founding father of Singapore, once said. “The first thing I did upon becoming prime minister was to install air conditioners in buildings where the civil service worked. This was key to public efficiency.”

 

The fact that under Yew, Singapore’s GDP per capita surged from $428 annually in 1960 when he first took office to $84,734 in 2023, a stunning increase of almost 20,000 percent, should give today’s environmentalist naysayers second thoughts.

 

Air conditioning also improves academic performance. Learning is greatly inhibited by heat both internationally and within the United States. Higher temperatures during exams dramatically reduce student performance. One class taking an exam in 90 degrees Fahrenheit conditions performed 13 percent worse than the same class taking it at 75 degrees.

 

Like most radical environmentalist policies, restrictions on air conditioning would do vastly more harm than environmental good. The alleged environmental benefits of restricting air conditioning in the name of energy efficiency are greatly overstated. That hasn’t stopped a huge international bureaucracy dedicated to restricting the technology with a vast array of red tape from rapidly growing. Restricting poor and developing nations’ use of air conditioning doesn’t save them from global warming; it merely  prevents them from following a proven path out of poverty in favor of purely speculative “benefits” of potentially marginally reduced global warming.

 

But AC isn’t the only form of temperature manipulation that environmentalists resent. Some are now also targeting refrigeration, which solved mankind’s age-old problem of food preservation and allows us to enjoy a variety of foods from different places worldwide throughout the year.  “Suddenly poor people who had not been able to have meat except on very special occasions could dine on meat frequently. Red meat consumption went through the roof. . . . This is sort of a sad mistake in the history of science,” as it allegedly contributed to global warming, author Nicola Twilley said in a Bloomberg interview. “Like you really don’t need to have a tomato in December, it’s going to taste like nothing anyway, just don’t do it.”

 

“And today we think of one of the climate solutions is to try and eat less red meat because it produces so much greenhouse gases, mostly from cows belching methane,” Akshat Rathi, Bloomberg’s senior climate reporter, replied to Twilley. “American fridges are huge and they really don’t need to be.”

 

Twilley claims that refrigeration is bad because “the power to run cooling equipment is more than 8% of global electricity usage right now,” which is a massive problem because “the food is so plentiful and so cheap that people would rather go and buy something else.”

 

Cox agrees. His New York Times op-ed calls for setting the refrigerator to “just under 40 degrees.” This is very unhealthy for the user in addition to being horrendously inconvenient — not that environmentalists care.

 

“I mean honestly rather than sniff their milk — because obviously sniffing off-milk will kill you, everyone knows that — they would rather pour it out and buy, just trust the sell-by label and buy another pint,” Twilley continued. “And that is an impact of refrigeration too.”

 

Twilley and other environmentalists believe Americans should drink more expired milk and eat less produce in winter in the name of social engineering. The fact that spoiled milk both tastes horrible and can sicken those who drink it means little to her ilk, apparently. It shouldn’t. The widespread availability of fresh food and drink enabled by refrigeration has been a boon to humanity.

 

The fact that a world without air conditioning and refrigeration would be an unhappier and unhealthier place appears to mean little to radical environmentalists. It’s enough to make you wonder if their ultimate goal isn’t a cleaner planet but rather greater control over your life.