Save the Planet, Move into a Cave

The invention of air conditioning was all part of the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.  No, really:

. . .as science writer Stan Cox argues in his new book, “Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer),” the dizzying rise of air conditioning comes at a steep personal and societal price.

We stay inside longer,
exercise less, and
get sick more often — and
the electricity used to power all that A.C. is helping push the fast-forward button on global warming.

The invention has also changed American politics: Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that’s transformed our electoral map in the last half century. Cox navigates all of these scientific and social angles with relative ease, providing a clear explanation of how A.C. made the leap from luxury to necessity in the United States and examining how we can learn to manage the addiction before we refrigerate ourselves into the apocalypse.

Thankfully Smitty at The Other McCain tackled this idiocy so I don't have to but I do have some thoughts.

As I have mentioned before, my house was built in 1923 and has neither heat nor air conditioning.  In the winter I sleep under an electric blanket and in the summer I sleep with a floor fan blowing on me.  I hate air conditioning and am absolutely miserable at work or any place else that is air conditioned.  Believe it or not, air conditioning is not a necessity.  Neither are cell phones, microwave ovens, television, WiFi, XBox, or indoor plumbing.  We could do without.  But why should we?  Innovation has improved all of our lives.  Good old American ingenuity and exceptionalism should be a source of pride for all of us.

I am always amused at how progressives pick and chose which aspect of modern life to disparage.  Bottom line-progressives are busybodies.  They always want to tell the other guy how to live.  So Stan Cox writes a book, and in doing so kills a bunch of trees, to tell the rest of us that we are killing the planet.  No doubt he will further increase his "carbon footprint" during his book tour, while telling us to turn off our air, bicycle to work and use recycled hemp bags to tote our organically grown groceries. 

Unfortunately there is no end to the silliness that progressives are willing to engage in ostensibly to "save the planet".  Newsflash:  the planet is just fine, butt out.

Read Smitty's take.