Geography asks three questions:
Geographers and other environmental scientists are aware of the problems associated with air conditioning, even as a growing number of us have become accustomed to its growing prevalence in the places we live, work, and play. I was, in fact, driving in an unnaturally cold car on a warm day when I heard a very cogent discussion on the radio program The Daily.
In How Air Conditioning Conquered America, journalist Emily Badger explains how air conditioning has reshaped our landscapes, architecture, and daily routines -- and its complex interactions with climate change. It is both our refuge from warming temperatures and an increasing cause of those very warming trends. She further explains how the comfort it provides comes with greater vulnerability when systems fail -- as they more often do.
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| Image: Holly Pickett / NYT |
Fortunately, she argues, cool comfort is as much a cultural expectation as a physical necessity. It is a condition that we created and one that we can begin to modify.
I recommend this half-hour tutorial because it allows students of geography to start understanding how air conditioning is likely to interact with many of the other issues we study as we seek to build climate resilience.
