This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

I didn’t mean to disparage the heat risk yesterday; I do understand. I once helped a friend build a deck in an Alabama July. It didn’t go well as you couldn’t sweat fast enough or hydrate enough because of the humidity. The sun literally wilted you and sucked out your soul. It was just too damn hot to be outside and function. In all honesty, if the great Spate Fair was giving away twenty-dollar bills, not in that heat.

While living in Cleveland, Ohio, I had to park the truck up against the snowbank to keep the radiator from freezing. That weather will kill you! And so will this weather. So, here’s a question: we burn wood, fossil fuels, anything handy to keep us warm in winter, and nobody questions the ethics or the environmental impact of staying warm. But somehow staying cool in a heatwave is a grave sin against God. It wastes electricity; they cry. What do you mean by waste exactly? I asked? I think the electricity was put to a well and reasonable purpose.

Air-conditioning puts extra heat into the environment! Do you think anyone will notice? If they added an extra inch of snow in Cleveland, would anyone notice?

It is generational bigotry; we’ve been staying warm since Junior started painting on the cave walls but staying cool is relatively a new experience. “Why, back in my day, Sonny, we didn’t have a fire and a nice fancy cave to lay around in all day! Five miles uphill each way! We were hunter gatherers back when hunter gathering really meant something!” Why is the discomfort from heat treated so differently from the cold? Tough it out! It’s not so bad! I could put on a winter coat if I wanted, but I’m not going to! I’m tough; It’s not so cold! When I lived in Alabama, I didn’t even own a winter coat. Now living in Arizona, I own three winter coats, and I have a closet that I keep them all in.

Is it even theoretically possible to turn back the hands of time to pre-air-conditioning days? Not bloody likely. Not unless we’re living in Mad Max times. “You can have it when you pry my cold and comfortable hands off the thermostat!” Is it addicting? Damn right it is! I slept right through the night and didn’t wake up rolling over in a puddle of sweat even once! It’s the greatest sleep aid since the invention of the feather pillow. But somehow air-conditioning has become symbolic of Western decadence and self- indulgence. Would it kill you to sleep in a puddle of sweat a few months a year?

My grandmother didn’t like riding in automobiles. Streetcars were okay. She rode the streetcar nearly every day. Something about those rubber tires bothered her. Steel rails planted in the pavement meant stability. You knew where you were going with steel rails. With rubber tires, you just don’t get that. A rubber tire could take you anywhere! My grandfather flew to California and left weeping like a man facing execution, and returned two weeks later, acting like he flew the plane back. The world is and either you accept the new technology or you don’t.

Have you ever noticed how air-conditioning stores don’t have a return line? Nobody ever brings one back unless it doesn’t work. It’s the usual suspects, the pseudo-intellectual beret wearing neo-beatnik types. “Lenin never needed air-conditioning! Well, I mean, of course, he does now! But you know what I mean! You know the type: Billy Buzzkill. Christmas is a bushwa celebration of the excesses of capitalism. My children really love Santa. Could you explain that to them in a way a six-year-old might understand?

Some, I believe, are just contrarians dissatisfied with everyone and everything, and some are just jealous. “I don’t want to sleep in the air-conditioning! It’s bad for you! It’s bad for the environment! I like sleeping in puddles! You shouldn’t do it. People who use it are assholes!” But if the opportunity to move to air-conditioning came about, how could you ever say no? The air-conditioning is bad for you is a European stereotype and a former American stereotype. I heard people say that kind of stuff when I was a kid, but I haven’t heard anyone say anything like that in years. Watching too much TV will make your palms hairy. No, wait, that was something else.

You know, those things your grandmother told you as she dosed you with Mr. Coe’s homemade salve. Looks like shit and smells like turpentine, but it works! “Don’t watch TV with the lights off, and don’t forget to throw a pinch of salt over your shoulder.” Except in a biker bar, don’t throw nothing in a biker bar! Don’t wear white after Labor Day. Anything that doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, except for bears and bikers.

The heat brought a merciful end to the Trump fair on Friday and threatens to Chernobyl it again today. Prohibiting Mr. Trump’s planned “long” speech. Big talk. An eighty-year-old man meets hundred-degree podium temperatures with mid-Atlantic humidity. Big talk indeed. I like to see him do it! But I’m not going out there in that heat, are you crazy? Mr. Trump (The Brave) has now evacuated to the cooler climes of South Dakota!

You should all attend Mr. Trump’s state fair, even it’s too hot for Mr. Trump to attend. But don’t let it stop you! Fox News says it’s the patriotic thing to do. It was hot on Iwo Jima too, you know! They didn’t need any air-conditioning!

“Soon you will be where your own eyes will see the source and cause and give you their own answer to the mystery.” ― Dante Alighieri