Synopses & Reviews
One of the Mother Nature Networks ten must-read environmental books” of the year, Losing Our Cool is the first book to examine how indoor climate control is helping send our outdoor climate reeling out of control. With summers growing hotter and energy demand heavier, Stan Cox shows how air-conditioning transforms human experience in surprising ways, by altering our bodies sensitivity to heat; our rates of infection, allergy, asthma, and obesity; and even our sex lives. It has also enabled an irrational commuter economy, triggered a migration toward the American South and West, and created the kind of workplace in which employers wear sweaters in July. But, as Cox shows us, by combining traditional cooling methods with newer technologies, we can make ourselves comfortable and keep the planet comfortable as well.
Review
This is an important book. The history of air-conditioning is really the history of the worlds energy and climate crises, and by narrowing the focus Stan Cox makes the big picture comprehensible. He also suggests remedies—which are different from the ones favored by politicians, environmentalists, and appliance manufacturers, not least because they might actually work.
—David Owen, author of Green Metropolis
Review
This is an important book. The history of air-conditioning is really the history of the worlds energy and climate crises, and by narrowing the focus Stan Cox makes the big picture comprehensible. He also suggests remedieswhich are different from the ones favored by politicians, environmentalists, and appliance manufacturers, not least because they might actually work.”
David Owen, author of Green Metropolis
As Stan Cox details in his excellent new book, Losing Our Cool, air conditioning has been a major force in shaping western society.”
Bradford Plumer, The National
This book is the go-to source for a better understanding of the complexity of pumping cold air into a warming climate.”
Maude Barlow
Important. . . .What I like about Coxs book is that he isnt an eco-nag or moralist."
Tom Condon, Hartford Courant
Stan Cox offers both some sobering facts and some interesting strategies for thinking through a big part of our energy dilemma.”
Bill McKibben
Well-written, thoroughly researched, with a truly global focus, the book offers much for consumers, environmentalists, and policy makers to consider before powering up to cool down.”
Publishers Weekly
Synopsis
First published in hardcover as an unprecedented heat wave swept across the country,
Losing Our Cool received extensive national and local coverage for exposing indoor climate controls collision with an out-of-control outdoor climate. As air conditioning approaches 20 percent of year-round electricity consumption by U.S. homes (the highest percentage in history), Americans use as much electricity for air conditioning as is currently consumed for all purposes by the one billion residents of the continent of Africa.
Author Stan Cox documents the surprising ways in which air-conditioning changes human experience: giving a boost to the global warming that it is designed to help us endure, enabling an otherwise impossible commuter economy, and altering human migration patterns. Though it saves lives in heat waves, it may also be altering our bodies sensitivity to heat; our rates of infection, allergy, asthma, and obesity; and even our sex lives. Losing Our Cool convincingly argues that by reintroducing traditional cooling methods and putting newer technologies into practiceand by moving beyond industrial definitions of comfortwe can make ourselves comfortable and keep the planet comfortable, too.
About the Author
Stan Cox is a plant breeder at the Land Institute in Salina, Kansas. He has written on environmental issues for newspapers nationwide, including the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as well as for CounterPunch, AlterNet, and many other online publications. He is the author of Sick Planet: Corporate Food and Medicine.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
1. Theres No Power on Earth That Can Stop It!”
2. Making the Weather
3. The Air-Conditioned Dream
4. Going Mobile
5. The Business Climate
6. Surviving the Great Indoors
7. India: Where A/C” Means VIP”
8. Inconspicuous Consumption
9. Coming out of the Cold
Notes
Index