Turn Off Your AC, Just for a Little Bit. Even in a Heat Wave | Opinion

After a relatively mild spring (by our modern, the-world-is-burning standards), I began to wonder if mother nature would gift us a reasonable summer. Last year, around this time, we couldn't go outside thanks to wildfire smoke that turned the sky orange. Maybe the climate disasters will chill out a bit this year?

No such luck. Just as school was starting to let out for summer, a mid-June heatwave forced Americans back inside. Right on schedule, air conditioners were cranked to the max.

AC has shifted from a luxury to a default necessity. As the scorching temperatures of summer arrive earlier and earlier each year, so too does the chill of indoor climate control. Back when I commuted into work, I dreaded that time around May or June when suddenly, my office would be freezing. Some anonymous person in charge of building maintenance would decide it was time, flip a switch, and plunge my day-to-day into the dreaded cold. I would sweat through my shirt on the walk from the train and then immediately start shivering when I got to my desk.

In many parts of the country, we cannot escape the all-encompassing cold of air conditioning, even as early as April. In the South, the AC never goes away. Sure, temperatures are hotter, but air conditioning wasn't always the default. People made do with fans, open windows, and short sleeves.

Growing up in the Midwest in the '90s, we would turn on our sole window unit in the living room on the rare August day. When I got hot, I slept on the floor of my room to be close to the cooler air. I worked throughout high school in a small, enclosed concession stand with two skin-scorching popcorn machines and anywhere from four to a dozen sweaty teenage bodies running around scooping ice cream. We cooled off with a few fans and some ice down our shirts.

Turns out, my memories have not been run through some halcyon nostalgia filter. AC use has exploded in the last 30 years. According to U.S. Census data, analyzed by Fixr, in 1993, just about three-quarters of single family homes in the Midwest had AC. In the West and Northeast, it was just about half. Now, all regions are pushing 100 percent AC coverage. In the South, it's been at about 100 percent since the early '90s.

As the cost of AC installation has gone down, and temperatures have gone up, Americans have been offered an opportunity for a steady indoor temperature year-round, regardless of the weather outside. And we've taken it.

Of course we did. What's more American than our compulsion for comfort—physical, emotional, and psychological? A fragmented media ecosystem has allowed us to create our own realities, a need for "cognitive safety" is pushing on the boundaries of free speech, and even powerful people like Jerry Seinfeld are complaining about being taken out of their comfort zone.

This drive for comfort forces us to disconnect from what's happening all around us. Opting-in to a conditioned climate allows us to completely ignore the changing seasons and our warming planet. Only listening to people who agree with us—or trying to silence those who disagree—creates our own, individually conditioned realities.

New York University professor and social psychologist Jonathan Haidt cited the work of political scientist Robert Putnam (of Bowling Alone fame) and psychologist Jean Twenge to show how the comforts of conveniences "atomize" our social structures. Each new technology that makes our lives easier also makes us less reliant on other people. Haidt's big focus is on smartphones and social media, as explored in his recent book, The Anxious Generation, but our society was cracking off into smaller and smaller pieces long before we had the robots in our pockets.

Cars allowed us to shop in other towns, reducing reliance on local businesses. A television set gave something for people to do in the evenings, reducing the need to hang out with neighbors, and by extension, eroding community structures and institutions (often called "third places," in contrast to work and home). Air conditioning allowed us to stay inside in the heat, limiting a play-based childhood where kids run around with each other and make their own fun.

After years of working from home, I decided to rent my own small office a few blocks from my house. The building is old, without the nicest amenities, which meant no central air. I kept telling myself I would get a window AC unit, but I never did. Instead, I took a fan that I stole from my sister and put it in the window.

I am a (relatively) young, able-bodied person. Someone with health issues, or in a much hotter climate than the Northeast, where I live, probably sees AC more as a necessity than a luxury.

But I have been able to disconnect from climate control, and with it, my compulsion for comfort. I walk up the three floors, open the door to my stuffy office, turn on the fan, and within minutes it gets to a manageable (if not sometimes slightly hot) temperature. I thought this most recent heat wave would finally break me, but it did not. I like being an iconoclast, I guess, but I also like offering myself up to the whims of the weather.

My eschewing of AC didn't bring me much, other than a few sweaty shirts and one day of mild dehydration when I forgot to drink enough water. But I remained connected to the outside world around me. A small thing, but maybe an important thing.

What if we all turned off the AC for a bit, opened our windows, and truly experienced life as it was happening, not what we manufactured it to be? We might be a little less comfortable, but maybe a little more connected.

Jeff Raderstrong is a writer and ghostwriter focused on the intersection of politics, the economy, and culture. Learn more about his work at www.raderstrong.com.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.