{"text":[[{"start":5.84,"text":"Keeping warm is sometimes expensive, but even a caveman can cope with the technical challenge: pull on an extra bearskin and throw another log on to the fire. Keeping cool is a trickier business. The eccentric Roman emperor Elagabalus sent his slaves into the mountains to fetch snow, and his approach was scaled up in the 19th century by the “ice king” Frederic Tudor, who would ship blocks of ice from New England’s frozen lakes to warmer climes. It may have been unwieldy, but it made Tudor a rich man. There’s money in comfort."}],[{"start":36.1,"text":"For air conditioning at the push of a button, we have a young fellow named Willis Carrier to thank. In 1902, Carrier developed a system for the printers Sackett & Wilhelms in which air was circulated over coils that had been chilled by compressed ammonia. His clients were delighted, and the technology was soon being used to make theatres tolerable in the hot summer. (Before air conditioning, many New York theatres simply shut their doors in the summer.)"}],[{"start":61.08,"text":"Since then, air conditioning has shaped the world. Dubai? Singapore? Hard to imagine without Carrier’s big idea — and with so many of the world’s megacities in tropical regions, there is more demand for cooling to come. Residential air conditioning allowed the population of America’s “sunbelt” to boom. The demographic shift had political consequences: in his book How We Got To Now Steven Johnson argued that air conditioning elected Ronald Reagan."}],[{"start":87.5,"text":"Yet air conditioning has now moved from a deep and subtle driver of political change to being a superficial talking point in yet another culture war."}],[{"start":95.88,"text":"One side emphasises the idea that air conditioning not only worsens climate change by increasing demand for fossil fuels, but directly warms cities by pumping hot air out of buildings — and for what? A mere extravagance. “It might feel nicer, but making you a little more comfortable isn’t the government’s job,” wrote Hannah Fearn in The Guardian."}],[{"start":115.6,"text":"Odd — who on earth is proposing government-funded air conditioning? Marine Le Pen, for one: last summer the far-right French politician proposed a large-scale plan to air condition public buildings."}],[{"start":126.4,"text":"Is it woke to die in a heatwave now? Is installing air conditioning a fascist act? Let us at least try to take the heat out of the argument."}],[{"start":136.12,"text":"It’s certainly true that in the UK it seems natural that we use energy to heat our buildings but not to cool them. That’s understandable: in the UK it’s unpleasantly cold more often than it is unpleasantly warm. It’s also illogical. Physically speaking, heat and cold both kill — especially the over-75s — and according to a paper published in Nature last December the risk rises much more sharply for excessive heat than for excessive cold. In a house that’s too cold you have options — slippers, cardigan, hot-water bottle. In a house that’s too hot, there is no escape."}],[{"start":172.96,"text":"It doesn’t make sense to suggest that heating a building to a safe — or even pleasant — temperature is a basic human right, while cooling it is an affectation. If it’s reasonable to do one then it’s reasonable to do both."}],[{"start":185.62,"text":"So in a world where extreme heatwaves are becoming more common, what should policymakers do about it? I agree that it’s not the government’s job to keep me a little more comfortable — but it would be nice if they would devote less effort to maximising my discomfort."}],[{"start":199.5,"text":"Sam Dumitriu, the head of policy at the Britain Remade think-tank, points out that in the UK we have placed some extraordinary obstacles in the way of air conditioning. Chief among them are “Part O” regulations that require developers to design buildings that stay cool without air conditioning. The use of air conditioning is allowable as a last resort."}],[{"start":219.36,"text":"Passive cooling sounds sensible and, in some circumstances, it can mean beautiful, stylish and cost-effective buildings. But insisting that developers exhaust every possibility for passive cooling imposes some unexpected costs. For example, “dual-aspect” cooling simply means having ventilation on two different external walls so that the breeze can blow through. Very sensible unless you’re designing a large apartment block, in which case satisfying dual-aspect rules means cutting away large chunks of the potential floor plan in order to make sure that every apartment is a corner apartment. Sometimes air conditioning is a proportionate solution to a real problem — and given how much solar energy is now available in the summer, it is increasingly sustainable, too."}],[{"start":265.26,"text":"There is some encouraging movement towards making air conditioning a viable choice. The UK government has been subsidising heat pumps for years, on the grounds that they are an energy-efficient way to heat your home. Heat pumps that can also function as air conditioners have been excluded until recently, but the government announced a few months ago that dual-function heat pumps would now also qualify. Good. (Successive governments have been struggling to persuade people to install heat pumps. Surely it would be a selling point if they doubled as air conditioners?) Dumitriu also tells me that both the UK and London authorities have been liberalising some of the passive-cooling rules."}],[{"start":302.8,"text":"It is easy to see how such regulations take hold. Subsidies for clean technologies can make sense but are expensive for the Treasury. Taxes on dirty technologies also make sense, but are politically painful. Regulations on the size and the position of windows and sunshades seem costless on paper. It is only once developers try to comply that they — and homebuyers — see the true cost."}],[{"start":325.92,"text":"It is better to keep things simple. If we can get the price of clean energy down and the price of dirty energy up, economic incentives will solve much of the problem. Tempting as it might be to regulate every detail, the regulators themselves are not all-wise — and however frivolous air conditioning might seem to some commentators, it is best not to second-guess how it might be used. For theatres, it was the difference between staying open and shutting the doors. For you and me, it might mean being able to sleep at night and string a thought together during the day. For a vulnerable person, it might mean the difference between life and death."}],[{"start":361.24,"text":"Or maybe none of those things. Willis Carrier, after all, never designed air conditioning to keep anyone cool. Sackett & Wilhelms asked for help controlling the humidity, upon which the quality of their colour printing processes depended. The pleasantly cool air was just a side effect — even if it was a side effect that changed the world."}],[{"start":381.8,"text":"Find out about our latest stories first — follow FT Weekend Magazine on X and FT Weekend on Instagram"}],[{"start":392.56,"text":""}]],"url":"https://audio.ftcn.net.cn/album/a_1791648701_8596.mp3"}