I work in a non-AC school building. It is absolutely unbearable in the warmer months. Ironic that we never had AC when I was growing up and didn't realize that we were hot and miserable! LOL

Let's hope that technology can find ways to make AC less destructive to the environment.

lots of restaurants and hotels are way over-cooled. People often need sweaters in the middle of summer.
Surely that could be adjusted and save a lot.

NYC without a/c . Now I have a/c but I set the thermostat high.

I grew up there and had no A/C at all.

The lovely humid summers taught me how to sleep without moving and to learn to feel, what I liked to call, microbreezes. LOL

Worse yet, when I got my first "real job" at cablevision when I was 24, I worked nights, so that meant I had to sleep during the day. Daytime summer heat with no A/C. I don't think I slept for 2 years straight while on the night shift.

days a year it wss miserable.

That's not glossing over intent of OP. Keeping system maintained, upgrading, cutting back when you can -- makes a difference. Don't know if it will be enough though.

and "San Francisco" in the same sentence.

Would survive in Salinas KS or the Midwest, Northeast, Northwest, Europe or most of the world for that matter without "artificial" heating?

Do ya suppose he'll write a piece on "Finding New Ways to Get Through the Winter?"

until he can go spend the month of August here in South Texas without AC, he should just STFU.

The environmental effects of heating in colder climates in other times of the year.
A solution for all climates is constructing buildings with passive heat retention or reduction built in. Desert dwellers did it for centuries. Many are doing it now. This has to change.

I grew up in Kansas. I still remember seeing my outline in the the sweat on the sheet, after I got up from where I had slept.
This weekend in Kansas City, it is supposed to get to 104°F with high humidity. People die in that heat.

The problem is not too much air conditioning, but too many people and an antiquated power grid being fed by yesterday's technology.
Too many Luddites fighting newer, safer, more efficient and reliable 24/7 energy sources.

...only outlaws will have air conditioning.

The reality is we rich, pampered Americans will go right on using our air conditioners right up to the moment that the power grid collapses, or the cost of electricity goes too high for the average person to afford.

because home and business construction lacks adequate natural ventilation. And it can get 119F here.

I do the best I can not to waste energy. I use fans a lot at home and the doors and windows are always open when I am home (even at night) so I can cool the place down enough that most the time I don't need to turn on the AC. But the office MUST be kept 78ish because my patients (and staff and clients) cannot be subjected to extreme heat.

And the cans of flea spray will leak if it hits 100F inside, which WILL happen easily without AC.

Air conditioning makes very hot swathes of our nation habitable.

Let's put this asshole out in the Mojave and see how he does, and how long it will take him to parse the difference between "necessity" and "luxury."

Spending a day or two in the Mojave or the Sonoran Desert will teach him that air conditioning is not a luxury. The night time lows are in the high 80's to low 90's and very uncomfortable.

As one other poster noted, people from Europe come for a visit and end up in the emergency room or worse dead due to the heat. (Of course where I live it is a dry heat. )

Where it's hot AND humid. Therefore, the temperature does NOT go down at night, unlike dry climates. I grew up in Houston without central air and my whole family was completely miserable.
When the temperature at midnight is 90 degrees or so, you can't sleep at all. I got a window unit in my room when I was in high school and it blew cold air on my feet. We never had the whole house airconditioned.

I have read that people from Europe will collapse in a Houston parking lot, between their car and the front door, from the heat.

just need to make do. hate AC, good for dieting too.

It is more energy efficient with current technology to air condition vehicles than to roll the window down. The extra wind drag is greater than the small amount extra needed for the air conditioning.

Regarding A/C in general, I remember growing up in NC my clothes and shoes would mildew just hanging in the closet.

We've seen population shifts in the US over the past 100 years to hotter areas in part, I think, because we do have AC. Relocating to someplace where temperature and humidity readings are routinely in the 90s is much more appealing if you have the AC technology to make it more bearable. Now we've moved to those places, living in artificial bubbles of temperate climates; perhaps if the notion that life would be literally unbearable without AC we really ought to shift more population back north?

But as others have pointed out, we should look at the climate impact of heating as well. Looking at AC in isolation is a mistake. And unfortunately, I don't think we can all live in the "Goldilocks zone" where it's not too hot, not too cold but is just right all the time. (And where that might be is obviously a matter of opinion anyway!)

This idiot has obviously never lived in any place with hot, humid summers.

Hell, if you stick a 14" pipe in the ground far enough. And cycle air through it. You will have a heat exchanger that will stay a constant temp. year round.

Here at Munich we have the A/C for the data processing centre of BMW using groundwater. We had to pump it up anyway for a culvert at a tunnel for the subway. Sorry, link is available in German only:
http://www.swm.de/geschaeftskunden/m-fernwaerme/m-fernkaelte/bmw.html

Edited to add: Sorry for my bad English, too.

and your English is okay!

Its too hot.

I'd like to see if Stan maintains his convictions after a summer in Houston.

We can have a few thousand less trans-oceanic and trans-continental airline flights to deliver people and foods, commute to and from work with a few tens of billions more miles in mass transit instead on one person to an automobile, and we can better utilize each and every non-polluting green technology. Doing so, we could save ten times as much pollution than we use to air condition and refrigerate ourselves and our foods.

Sadly, Americans really don't care about climate change. You know why? 3 reasons: (1) it's not critically hot enough in most of the country, (2) we have AC, (3) our agricultural base won't be destroyed. It's sad but true. And countries that don't have these advantages generally don't have the political, economic, or military muscle to force climate change policies.