Nehaveigur

Chanting USA! USA! is warranted when it comes to air conditioning. Not saying it isn’t warranted for other things too, but AC is an obvious case. American AC is superior.

Part of that superiority comes from it existing where you’d want it to. Subways for example. As I’m writing this, I’m on the E train from the airport into Manhattan. It’s hot and humid outside, yet I’m cool and dry, all thanks to AC. London underground doesn’t have AC, and for the few weeks that it gets hot there, they’re unbearable. They get so hot that if instead of people they transported cows, animal protection laws would make it illegal. Not a joke, still funny.

Another example: Apartments. This summer, my family spent some time in Austria and China, and in both cases, the apartments we stayed at, while nice otherwise, didn’t have AC. They should have, because it got hot. In Austria, I talked to another dad I met at a playground. He lived in an apartment complex that had been built only a few years earlier. He wasn’t allowed to install AC because the homeowners association said that opening the windows during the night and closing the curtains during the was sufficient to keep cool. He did and measured the temperature, which was of course unacceptably high. He showed the HOA his readings and they didn’t care. My uncle, who used to install ACs in Vienna, thought that the approval process is more burdensome than the actual work.

Hostility against AC extends to public spaces. The Natural History Museum in Vienna, with its ancient and large collection, doesn’t have AC. Instead, they open their large windows during the cooler times of the day. Is it really so difficult to retrofit those ancient buildings?

My dad used to think that real men didn’t need AC. He was proud of never using the AC in his car, because why would you need that if you can just open the window when driving? My mom doesn’t like to have the AC on when she visits us either. She’s worried it makes her sick. The resistance to AC in Europe looks like it’s cultural, but it also gets justified with the need to reduce energy consumption and the greenhouse gases it produces. There is a good argument to be had about this. We will spend energy no matter what, and is not being uncomfortably hot one of the things that are worth it?