Last week the temperature went above 100 F (38 C) for two days and close to it for a day or two before and after, plus it was humid. Everyone talked about the heat.
I didn’t try to bring it up, but my not using air conditioning led people to the same questions over and over: how did I make it, did I use a fan, etc. Everything always about me, never about the people hurt by my polluting and depleting.
Then most comment on how they couldn’t make it. Occasionally an old person will mention how they grew up without air conditioning and don’t like it, though they use it when it gets hot enough.
I point out that people have lived on this island for over 5,000 years.
They say it’s hotter now.
I say people have lived in hotter, more humid places for hundreds of thousands of years and they weren’t all dying.
If they’re liberal or progressive, they’ll say something about special struggles of old, poor, or disabled people, as if anyone didn’t know. Water is wet.
Anyway, what I hear people communicating more than ever is how entitled and fragile they are. I wake up a couple nights a year sweating. They lose all perspective. People are actually suffering in the world and they complain if their skin has to touch air more then ten degrees from 68 or any humidity whatsoever.
Once I started hearing their entitlement and fragility, I can’t stop hearing it.
I’d rather face discomfort and develop resilience and personal responsibility than gain comfort but lose resilience and become fragile and entitled. This choice shouldn’t have to be dichotomous, and it might not be in theory, but in practice, air conditioning seems to make people fragile and entitled.
Maybe there’s a selection effect and it only happens to people I know. I hope so, so that more people are resilient than I’d think.
I read recently that 20,000 people are now dead because of the recent heat wave in Europe. They were fragile, and they died. In past centuries, nobody had air conditioning. But how many fragile old people died from the heat back then? We don’t know. Perhaps a lot. I believe it is better for people to not die. People who need air conditioning should be able to have air conditioning.
The ideal would be if we could reduce our numbers low enough so that we all could live in a comfortable climate. That way, nobody would suffer and nobody would die due to the climate.