The Tragedy of Air Conditioning

Petoskey — I’m sitting in my car on a warm August afternoon. It’s 77 degrees, and I’m watching people wander slowly into a store. It’s a 30-foot journey from the parking lot into the cool, cavernous building. I can tell who has air conditioning and who doesn’t by their clothes. Jeans: air conditioning. Sundress: no A/C. Hoodie: central air set to 68. Short-sleeve linen shirt: probably window fans.

Who doesn’t love walking into a cool house after mowing the lawn on a sticky summer afternoon or rushing to the window unit after walking up three flights of stairs? We all do. But as much as we may love the modern ability to live in a bonafide meat freezer on the hottest day of year, our addiction to air conditioning has consequences.

Linen, seersucker, and madras are staples of classic American style. They are thin and breathable, keeping us cool as temperatures rise and eliminating any perceived need for perpetual air conditioning in Michigan. A thin madras short sleeve button-up is cooler than a T-shirt. These fabrics were conceived long before air conditioning was around. They reflect a natural approach to beating the heat. Classic American summer is a madras shirt on a screened-in porch, it’s not a black hoodie in a chilly living room. Summer fabrics are natural and beautiful. Air conditioning, in no small way, renders them obsolete.

If we run from climate-controlled bedroom to climate-controlled car to climate-controlled grocery store to climate-controlled office and back again, we have no need for these breathable fabrics. We have no need for tradition, no need for culture. To wear natural fabrics in the natural world might, technically, be more inconvenient. We might run the risk of breaking a slight sweat in the middle of July, but it’s beautiful; it’s aesthetic. None of us currently living has ever breathed in a world that actually prioritizes style. Our gods today are convenience and efficiency. The synthetically programmed world of perpetual air conditioning is a flatter world. It is seamless and stagnant. No ups, no downs. No highs, no lows.

It might sound strange at first, but the question of air conditioning is deeply philosophical. At the crux of the problem is a debate between industry and culture. There is an argument that air conditioning is key to modern industriousness. Lee Kwan Yew, the founding father of modern Singapore, once said: “Air conditioning was a most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history. It changed the nature of civilization by making development possible in the tropics. Without air conditioning, you can work only in the cool early-morning hours or at dusk.”

This fact is easy to understand. It’s clear how air conditioning makes all sorts of civilizational advancement possible in previously inhospitable climates. With a stable indoor climate, you can work more comfortably for more hours. Streamlined efficiency. The modern world knows no borders, no limits.

Yet our lives are not only about streamlined efficiency. We cannot forget culture. What do we have without culture? Virgil Davis Hunt, a Tennessee-based writer who has spoken extensively on the impact of air conditioning in the American South, writes: “It’s silly to argue against A/C, something we all so unquestioningly accept as a default feature of our world, but not enough effort has gone into considering how it’s altered our world. The main bogeyman of the destruction of our ‘lived environment’ is the automobile, but I’d argue it’s air conditioning. We have summer breaks because the heat is unbearable, and it’s no coincidence that summer is the time during which social activity flourishes. Air conditioning has dulled this and enables the extension of all manner of economically productive activities through the summer. In the process, it’s destroyed the ability of people to genuinely settle into leisure: a defining characteristic of the South.”

There is always a trade off. At what cost? What is progress? Is traditional culture possible in technological modernity?