Professor wants to ban air conditioning to save planet from global warming
Air conditioning “will be the end of us” and lawmakers ought to pass legislation regulating it’s use, a prominent professor from New York University (NYU) wrote in a Time Magazine article last month.
“Today Americans use twice as much energy for air-conditioning as we did 20 years ago, and more than the rest of the world’s nations combined,” wrote Eric Klineberg, professor of sociology at NYU. “As a climate-change adaption strategy, this is as dumb as it gets.”
“I’m skeptical that American businesses and consumers will reduce their use of air-conditioning without new rules and regulations,” he added.
Klinenberg went on to propose a rule that would make it illegal for businesses to set their thermostats below 70 degrees, arguing such actions “might well be necessary if we can’t turn down the dial on our own.”
Klinenberg, the author of Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago, also wrote that “trying to engineer hot weather out of existence rather than adjust our culture of consumption for the age of climate change” is “indefensible.”
“Let’s put our air conditioners on ice before it’s too late,” he concluded.
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