Word: aires
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...will confess a bias here. I love warm weather, even when it slouches toward humidity. I detest the harsh, slightly metallic quality of the air forced through even the fanciest AC systems. The only air conditioner I own sits, unused, in my car; my home is happily unrefrigerated. But given the energy mess we're in, I can now gild my personal preference with a patina of high-mindedness: air-conditioning is bad for the planet, and for national security, and for our balance-of-payments deficit. Unfortunately, it is not as bad as I'd like...
...suffered on the campaign trail. "Americans seem to keep their houses cooler in summer than they do in the winter," muses Edward Parson, an environmental expert at the University of Michigan Law School. But it's hard to know for sure, since there are no comprehensive studies that measure air-conditioning trend lines...
...that's still pretty egregious. We used an estimated 4 quadrillion British thermal units on air-conditioning in 2006, which is more than the total energy usage of all but 21 countries. And a fair amount of that is peak usage - the sort that sends the electric grid crackling toward brownouts and meltdowns and increases the demand for the construction of more electric power plants (and the pollution they spew - unless they use renewable sources like hydropower or, as John McCain correctly insists, nuclear power, which should be carefully reconsidered). "A lot of utilities supplement their main power sources with...
...Schipper also estimates a savings of 4% for every degree warmer you push your thermostat. If you're set at 70deg.F now and move it to 75deg.-a comfortable, if slightly chilly number to my mind-you save 20% of the cost and energy of your air-conditioning bill. Schipper also says the savings from more-efficient air-conditioning systems can be enormous: in many Asian and European hotel rooms, the AC and electricity are activated only when you slip your magnetic room key into a slot near the door. A program to retrofit all public buildings with high-tech...
...arrays or electric cars. It reminds people - of a certain age - of Jimmy Carter, in his dreadful cardigan sweater, telling them to set their thermostats at 68deg.F in winter to conserve oil. Carter was certainly right about that one - heating represents nearly twice (roughly 7%) the energy usage that air-conditioning does. By contrast, the Bush Administration has had a policy of malignant neglect, enunciated by Dick Cheney, who once called conservation a "sign of personal virtue" but not a national goal. "After Carter, sacrifice became a hot-button word," Schipper says. "But there's a reasonable position between sacrifice...