It’s a cool 60 degrees in New York City right now, but in a few weeks time, we—along with the rest of the U.S.—will likely be experiencing the dead heat of summer. Here, that means sweating through your clothes while waiting for the M train, constantly inhaling the weighty stink of garbage, and listening to the city’s elite drone on endlessly about Summer Fridays and their homes in the Hamptons. It also means that it’s time to fire up your window air conditioner, right?
WRONG.
Friends, colleagues, strangers: I’m here to tell you what, in your heart of hearts, you already know. Air conditioners are hurting us more than they’re helping us. Air conditioners are making us weak. “I think my AC is making me sick,” a Gawker Media co-worker recently texted me. And he’s right. It is making him sick. Sick in the head.
Air conditioning is a blight on society, mostly because none of us are responsible enough to be trusted with it. There’s no reason that you, on a 95 degree day, should have to haul a sweater everywhere you go and yet you do because indoor public spaces have been turned into freezing cold tundras by people who should know better. Sure, you could avoid those overly air conditioned places entirely and stay outdoors, but—oh, is that rain? No, it’s not. It’s the filthy water from someone’s window unit dripping all over you. And by the way? That window unit is poorly installed and could crush you to death at any moment.
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