Austerity by Choice or Force?

The air conditioner in the wine shop I visited yesterday had gone out. The shopkeeper warned me to get in and out or else I would soon be sweating. It was rather warm at 82 degrees, which I personally do not mind, but it was clearly cutting into business (and not good for the wine).
Even so, I spent some time reflecting with the merchant on a future in which air conditioning was limited or nonexistent.
Most homes and offices built since the 1960s were constructed under the assumption that indoor temperature control would always be with us. They did not worry about cross breezes, windows that open, tall and wide doors, and so on, the theory being that in the future, none of that would matter.
Most of these buildings would become stultifying very quickly without constant air flow.
This particular shop was narrow and long with no windows except a front one that does not open. The front door is around the corner. So even though it was a cool 65 degrees outside, there was nothing the proprietor could do to take advantage of that.
Seems rather unwise to build that way doesn’t it? Well, if you believe that air conditioning will forever be available and affordable, it’s no big deal.
Recent trends raise questions about how much we can presume that to remain true. The price of utilities is already up (at least) 30 percent over four years. For some homeowners, their monthly bills look like mortgage payments from ten years ago.
This is already a source of great frustration for many homeowners in cooler climates. It can be in the 60s outside but, without air conditioning, the indoors can heat up to the 80s and there is nothing that can be done.
Meanwhile, indoor temperature control is just not as easy and affordable as it once was. Because of regulatory changes and mandates, new units are wildly expensive but so is repairing the old units.
Everyone has different preferences in this regard but I’ve personally come to loathe artificial indoor temperature control, especially those digital units with complicated controls that allow fancy programming and smart-phone connections. I’ll take an analog dial any day, and separate systems for heat and cool, please.
Even better, I would rather just have … fresh air and fans in the warm months, and a fantastic water-heated radiator in winter months. This is so much more humane than the digital-tech heat pumps everyone uses today.
So yes, I would rather do without. For that matter, I’m perfectly fine indoors within a wide range of temperatures, as much as 20 degrees.
That said, the new attacks on air conditioning are deeply worrisome. In Cox’s essay he vaguely alludes to a future without any indoor climate control in order to, you guessed it, “slow climate change and to adapt to it.”
So, yes, we could all use a bit more austerity in our lives. We are all too precious, too wasteful, too self-indulgent. The savings rate is at historic lows, which is a bad sign for the future. We could generally all use more attention on the need to defer consumption in general. That said, the growing trend is not for us to choose this path but rather to have it forced upon us by governments.
Just as there are growing attacks on air conditioning, we are starting to see the same concerning meat eating. Hardly a day goes by when NPR or some mainstream news outlet does not inveigh against cows and beef. We are told to eat far less meat. Small-farm owners are facing tremendous difficulties even getting by.
This is somehow supposed to be good for the environment and more ethical. I’ve never bought into all this stuff. We are omnivores, as should be obvious from our biology. So many people have had grand success with switching to a meat-heavy keto diet: not just weight loss but stronger heart and overall health. Veggies alone much less bug eating and Bill Gates-created fake meat just doesn’t cut it.
You can make an argument that Americans do not eat nearly enough meat. It was rationed in World War II. Then in the 1970s and following, we had the food pyramid privilege breads and corn over meat. Then came seed oils as a replacement for animal fat. There is now a vast body of research proving that this was all terrible for our health.
Once again, there is nothing wrong with the personal desire to eat less and eat better food. But this push for forced austerity is deeply troubling. It’s become a fashionable ideology to impose suffering on the general population in the tradition of the flagellants: We must all do penance for our excesses, our sins against mother nature, and our failure to adopt socialist central planning.
And all of this will be forced on us. It seems like we are being prepared for a big round of mass deprivation forcibly imposed.
Too much bathing can cause dry skin and hair, which we try to fix with all sorts of moisturizers and conditioners. It makes far more sense simply to stop scrubbing ourselves so much. This is especially true with hair: so much shampoo so often is the very reason why people think they need all these other products. If most people would simply stop washing it so often, they might find that the natural luster will return.
Too much washing does indeed “upset the balance of microorganisms on the skin and encourages the emergence of hardier, less friendly organisms that are more resistant to antibiotics.”
Plus, the report is correct that: “our immune systems need a certain amount of stimulation by normal microorganisms, dirt, and other environmental exposures in order to create protective antibodies and immune memory. This is one reason why some pediatricians and dermatologists recommend against daily baths for kids. Frequent baths or showers throughout a lifetime may reduce the ability of the immune system to do its job.”
All of this seems right. In most places in the world, people shower two or three times per week and that is plenty unless you are playing hard sports every day. It’s certainly worth trying: You might be surprised at how much cleaner and healthier you feel.
All that said, you can see what’s coming here. Austerity will be forced on us. Especially with the possibility of price controls, beginning with groceries but likely expanding to everything else, shortages and rationing will come, too.
Californians already know about this with the frequency of brownouts in the state, plus water rationing.
Again, we could all eat less, shower less, and be better about tolerating a wider range of temperature fluctuation indoors. That said, these should be choices made from human volition and not managed by some grand government plan.
There is every reason to expect that a season of austerity is coming if not here already. How far this goes and how much decline we will face is a matter of the policy response.
My merchant friend and I mused about large skyscrapers and office complexes being abandoned because temperature control becomes either unaffordable or simply not available due to an overloaded power grid. If someone had laid that out to me 10 years ago, it would have seemed far-flung. Now, not so much.