I grew up without air conditioning in a small town outside of Houston. We finally got a couple of window units when I was 13, after my great-uncle died and left us a little money.<\/p>\n
That made it easier to sleep in the summer, but I still spent a lot of my time in the room we called the den, which wasn\u2019t air-conditioned, sitting in a large easy chair with a fan blowing directly on me. It was my favorite place to read and I read a lot.<\/p>\n
Of course, we also had an attic fan, which circulated the air through a lot of the house. I\u2019ll also point out that you don\u2019t move much when you read and that we had plenty of water. A quick shower, a cold drink, and staying out of the sun will keep you going for a long time on a really hot day.<\/p>\n
I could say this was all before climate change, but, of course, the climate change we\u2019re experiencing now goes back to the industrial revolution. But while summers in the area where Houston is now have been hot and humid for millennia \u2013 long before European colonization \u2013 we are now reaching a point where they\u2019ll get just enough worse to make life much harder for everyone.<\/p>\n
In our modern world, air conditioning is a necessity. Houston may have become a large city before air conditioning was universal \u2013 ports and oil will do that \u2013 but it didn\u2019t become the headquarters of so many major corporations until that happened.<\/p>\n
Still, it\u2019s useful to point out that in places that have always had hot, humid summers, people figured out how to survive and thrive before air conditioning. Some of that came from building with the weather in mind, some from knowing it was going to happen and being prepared.<\/p>\n
Those who live in places that get serious winter will tell you the same thing about winter.<\/p>\n
There is a point where those things don\u2019t do enough. We\u2019re going to get heat waves that kill people who do everything right.<\/p>\n
The recent heat wave in India is not that far off from the horrific one Stan Robinson uses at the start of The Ministry for the Future<\/i>. I suspect we don\u2019t have an accurate count for how many died in the recent one, because we never do in heat waves, but I\u2019m sure many people died. Heat waves are, in fact, the deadliest of so-called \u201cnatural\u201d disasters, but we tend to forget that.<\/p>\n
India needs \u2014 and needs now \u2014 not just air conditioning, but access to water in a way that doesn\u2019t currently exist.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not the only country that needs that and air conditioning and water aren\u2019t the only key elements. In the United States we have states passing laws that prohibit requiring employers to give outdoor workers water breaks \u2013 that is, it\u2019s not that they don\u2019t require such breaks, but that no city or county can adopt a law requiring them. This includes Texas, where such a law would be obscene in a normal summer, much less in a climate change one.<\/p>\n
In a well-run society, such laws would be blatantly unconstitutional. What they should be doing instead is passing laws requiring employers to provide many breaks and landlords to provide air conditioning, just as they\u2019re required to provide heat. But apparently cruelty really is the point.<\/p>\n
We do have to work with what people who live in harsh climates have learned over the years, because we\u2019re not going to get the best tools. It would be hard even if we actually tried to do it, but it\u2019s pretty clear that many powerful people are going to resist such efforts, which is going to make it that much harder.<\/p>\n
Having grown up in a hot, humid climate, I do know how to keep myself reasonably safe during a heat wave. Of course, where I live, serious heat waves \u2013 like serious winter \u2013 are rare occurrences. We think it\u2019s hot around here when it hits the 80s (F), just as we think it\u2019s freezing when it gets below 50F, much less 40!<\/p>\n
Yes, we are spoiled, but even here we need to pay attention. Climate change is coming for us all.<\/p>\n
Air conditioning isn\u2019t all that common around here. I recall being in San Francisco on a day when it hit 105 F and discovering that the restaurants and shops weren\u2019t air conditioned, something that you would never see in Houston or Washington, D.C., for that matter.<\/p>\n
It gets hot here, you open the windows, and mostly that works. But a few years ago, we saw the sky turn orange from fires. Couple smoke with even a mild heat wave and you won\u2019t be able to open the windows.<\/p>\n
At our apartment, we have a heat pump now, which gives us heat when we need it in winter and AC for those bad air hot days. We don\u2019t use it much, but it\u2019s available.<\/p>\n
I\u2019m an advocate for using as little of those tools as you can \u2013 but using them when you need to.<\/p>\n
The main thing is that you have to pay attention to both weather and climate. We will never get to forget about it.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not an individual problem, but we have far too many examples of having problems we didn\u2019t cause dumped on us individually. We need collective solutions to end up keeping our planet healthy for people, but that\u2019s going to take a lot of work.<\/p>\n
Still, it really is easier to keep the Earth livable than to move to Mars. Remember that just as you remember to get out of the sun and hydrate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I grew up without air conditioning in a small town outside of Houston. We finally got a couple of window units when I was 13, after my great-uncle died and left us a little money. That made it easier to sleep in the summer, but I still spent a lot of my time in the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[122,56],"tags":[311,910],"class_list":["post-3451","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-future","category-life-experiences","tag-climate-change","tag-heat-waves"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3451"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3452,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3451\/revisions\/3452"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3451"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3451"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3451"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}