Climate (out of) control

Slate's science, technology and society writer, William Saletan, provides some useful and informative factual confirmation for my own rather meandering critical thoughts about air-conditioning.

As Saletan puts it:

Instead of fixing the outdoors, we're trying to escape it. On every street in my neighborhood, people have torn down ordinary homes and put up giant air-conditioned boxes that extend as far as possible toward the property line. They've lost yards and windows, but that's the whole idea. Outdoor space is too hard to control, so we're replacing it with indoor space. From 1991 to 2005, the median lot size of single-family homes sold in the United States shrank by 9 percent, but the median indoor square footage increased by 18 percent. If you can't stand the heat, go hide in your kitchen.

It does seem that current trends in climate control are, to put it lightly, insane.

I suspect, though, the public's reaction to any kind of political movement against air conditioning will be, if anything, cool.