A/C: The Coolest Invention Ever

And It Might Be Killing Us.

I hate the heat. I’m just not a hot weather kind of guy. I hail from the northern midwest where much of the time, the landscape is indistinguishable from Siberian tundra — just with more outlet malls. Heat is my weakness. But when it does get hot, I have one unbeatable deterrent — air conditioning.

It’s a good thing too. A heatwave has been striking much of the world. Local temperature records are being broken from Europe to the Middle East to the Far East. Fueled by hot, dry conditions, wildfires are raging from California to Oregon and from Scandinavia to Siberia. Asphalt is melting in the Netherlands. Plastic lattes are melting in Japan. Nuclear reactors are being shut down in France because of the heat.

And without air conditioning, it would be much more intolerable.

But AC keeps us more than cool. It keeps us alive in heatwaves like the one that is happening right now and it allows our civilization to function as well as it does. Without it, the modern world just wouldn’t be as cool — so to speak.

And it also might be killing us.

But before we get into that, let’s talk about Benjamin Franklin.