Air conditioning - friend or foe?
Article in Salon.com about air conditioning - given how much the recent purchase of mine has been weighing on my mind, I thought I'd post a link to it.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/07/07/heat/
(Sorry for the ugly link, someday I'll learn more html)
As much as I'm enjoying my relatively cool room, I can't help but feel conflicted. Right now I'm experimenting with only using the actual AC feature when it's quite hot and using a extra fan to spread the cool air about the room, and just using the plain fan when the temperature is reasonable.
There are several levels of confliction- the first is naturally my concern for the effect on the environment, and I need to do more research to find out how I can minimize this, or at least counteract in some other way. The second is my electric bill. The third is that I find it isolating to be in my house, with the windows shut. I can't see the river when I wake up in the morning, I can't look out at night and see the lights and be thrilled by living in Manhattan. There's no question that if I still lived in Ithaca I would shun the air conditioning in favor of the night sounds. The flip side of the isolation is that the street noise from the seemingly endless party on my stoop no longer wakes me up.
So I do my best to minimize the use, and think critically about my footprint on the earth, but sometimes I opt for ease of living and comfort over what may think is right.
And, it's becoming harder to avoid the temptation to just crank up the cool air and cuddle up under covers in my bed. Not helped by the fact that last summer I spent much of my time at a friend's house that I fondly referred to as "the meat locker" as he kept the temperature hovering around 60 degrees and became quite used to it.
Apparently my morals with regard to the environment are a little more flexible than I realized. Must work on that.
http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/07/07/heat/
(Sorry for the ugly link, someday I'll learn more html)
As much as I'm enjoying my relatively cool room, I can't help but feel conflicted. Right now I'm experimenting with only using the actual AC feature when it's quite hot and using a extra fan to spread the cool air about the room, and just using the plain fan when the temperature is reasonable.
There are several levels of confliction- the first is naturally my concern for the effect on the environment, and I need to do more research to find out how I can minimize this, or at least counteract in some other way. The second is my electric bill. The third is that I find it isolating to be in my house, with the windows shut. I can't see the river when I wake up in the morning, I can't look out at night and see the lights and be thrilled by living in Manhattan. There's no question that if I still lived in Ithaca I would shun the air conditioning in favor of the night sounds. The flip side of the isolation is that the street noise from the seemingly endless party on my stoop no longer wakes me up.
So I do my best to minimize the use, and think critically about my footprint on the earth, but sometimes I opt for ease of living and comfort over what may think is right.
And, it's becoming harder to avoid the temptation to just crank up the cool air and cuddle up under covers in my bed. Not helped by the fact that last summer I spent much of my time at a friend's house that I fondly referred to as "the meat locker" as he kept the temperature hovering around 60 degrees and became quite used to it.
Apparently my morals with regard to the environment are a little more flexible than I realized. Must work on that.
posted by Maggy @ 10:31 PM
1 Comments:
At 9:12 AM,
Mary Ann said…
Glad to see your environmental conscience is lurking around your air conditioner. Someday we can do the math comparing air conditioning to driving a car.
You don't need fancy html to make your links look better. On the toolbar where you write your post, there's a button (fifth from the left) with some unrecognizable icon that's supposed to suggest "link." Highlight the word you want to be hyperlinked, click the weird button and paste the url into the blank in the pop-up screen.
You might want to check the settings for comments so that people without google accounts can comment.
I want to make some snide comment about the meat locker. But I'll refrain.
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