To save the planet, NYU prof wants to pull the plug on air conditioning
File this story under “Global Warming Insanity.”
Air conditioning “will be the end of us” and lawmakers ought to pass legislation regulating it’s use, a prominent professor from New York University (NYU) wrote in a Time Magazine article last month.
“Today Americans use twice as much energy for air-conditioning as we did 20 years ago, and more than the rest of the world’s nations combined,” wrote Eric Klineberg, professor of sociology at NYU. “As a climate-change adaption strategy, this is as dumb as it gets.”
“I’m skeptical that American businesses and consumers will reduce their use of air-conditioning without new rules and regulations,” he added.
Klinenberg went on to propose a rule that would make it illegal for businesses to set their thermostats below 70 degrees, arguing such actions “might well be necessary if we can’t turn down the dial on our own.”
Klinenberg, the author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, also wrote that “trying to engineer hot weather out of existence rather than adjust our culture of consumption for the age of climate change” is “indefensible.”
“Let’s put our air conditioners on ice before it’s too late,” he concluded.
Professor wants to ban air conditioning to save planet from global warming (Campus Reform)
Comments
Note that the guy is from New York. I find it amazing how those in the Northeast love to tell the rest of us how to live. In fact, they are so bad that most of the US wars have come from these Yankees telling others in the world what to do. I live in the South, I can assure you that it is almost impossible to live here without air. I did do this as a child, but will not do it as an adult. So just like you took our economy in 1865, you are trying to take our health and comfort in 2013. As to restaurants lowering their thermometer to below 70, there is a law against that, it is called the law of economics. It would cost far too much to cool a place to that temp down here.
The clerisy from the northeast always want to do something that disproportionately hurts someone else, such as taking away air conditioning in the south. But winter heating in the north results in a bigger carbon footprint than summer air conditioning in the south. Let’s pull the plug on northern winter heating!