Losing Our Cool

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A beloved colleague in ministry, a brilliant and humble guy, used to
joke that his one real claim to fame was that he had successfully
air-conditioned two churches during his career. That's a real
accomplishment—his ability to run a capital campaign, to rally the
troops for the work and fundraising, always impressed me.

But a recent book has made me reflect on my envy of my colleague's ever-temperate pulpit. Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)
is an eye-opening and guilt-inducing look at the ways in which air
conditioning has become a fixture in American culture—and at the impact
of this development on our environment, lifestyle, politics and health.

Author
Stan Cox knows the summer heat. The Land Institute scientist grew up in
sweltering Georgia and settled on the sun-baked plains of Kansas. While
his book is largely devoid of autobiographical detail, this personal
history seems to lend an empathetic tone that helps his devastating
analysis go down. Without this, I would have given us up as a doomed
culture, turned up the air and waited for the coming climate
apocalypse. Instead I've tried to turn our air off more often, to close
shades, to drink more water, to strategically position fans and seat
myself near the cross-ventilation.

On the environmental front,
the causes for despair are myriad. Cox understands how deeply ingrained
this technology has become in mere decades; he knows that there are
market and health and political concerns at play. As air conditioning
grew more energy efficient, American homes got larger—the increased
efficiency didn't reduce consumption but simply made it possible and
affordable to cool larger spaces. Cox depicts a difficult bind: the
more we use our air conditioning, the hotter the climate—and the less
accustomed we are to dealing with the heat.

The social
ramifications are rather obvious. We're less likely to go outside on
hot days, or even warm days, than in years and generations past. Our
kids would rather veg in front of the television than get all sweaty in
the backyard. In my own household, we drive to the park instead of
walking or riding bikes. As a teenager, I never worried about weight
gain in the winter, because I always lost it again in the summer—too
hot to eat big meals, spending time swimming and playing, sweating the
pounds away even while reading. Not so in my largely air-conditioned
adult life.

Cox points out that the problem is not that we cool ourselves and homes so much as how
we do. Our preference for central air over window units puts Americans'
energy usage is at sky-high levels. We spend more energy on
air-conditioning alone than the entire continent of Africa spends on
all of its energy needs combined. Our consumption is well beyond our
nation's measurable need for cooling. The collective confusion of wants
and needs—see this week's lectionary theme of "daily bread"—makes us a
country of comfortably chilled sinners.

The ways in which
American Christians choose to engage the broader culture are manifold.
Some reject much; others accept and adopt much. We raise questions
about technology and its impact on the practice of our faith—cell
phones and Sabbath keeping, Facebook and community building, ubiquitous
media and our understanding of sexuality and relationships. But those
on all sides of the culture wars have been pretty unanimous in our
acceptance of air conditioning as an unambiguous good.

Cox urges
us to reconsider. Reading him leaves me hopeful, because I believe we
can learn to live within our energy means—and to remember and
appreciate what is wonderful about hot, sweaty, languid summers. But
mostly I am hopeful that I am now well equipped to shoot down any
demands for a church capital campaign to air condition the building.