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In my home state of New Hampshire, July can get hot. While it’s perhaps not as frequent as you might experience in Louisiana, there are lots of days we suffer a wet, sticky kind of hot that makes your clothes stick to you and makes it difficult to breathe. And as anyone from Las Vegas can attest, while heat can be uncomfortable, heat and humidity can be unbearable.
And it’s this humid heat that contributed to my recent decision to install a nitrogen tunnel at the pizza factory I now run. By spraying liquid nitrogen, we’re able to rapidly cool hot products – a functionality that enhances food safety, food quality, and our ability to operate during hot, humid New Hampshire summer days. This has proven especially important (and useful) over the past month when the temperature on the factory floor has soared on several days. If we didn’t have the ability to use liquid nitrogen, we would likely have been forced to shut down production on those 90 degree plus days.
All of this got me thinking about air conditioning, and in particular the differing attitudes held by Americans and non-Americans about our use of energy to cool our living spaces. In India, where rolling blackouts led to on again, off again air conditioning, I recall watching swings of almost 35 degrees on the thermostat one August almost a decade ago. I’ve also found myself struggling to sleep in emerging market countries as varied as Ghana, Malaysia, Uruguay, and Pakistan. These travels always made me feel grateful to live in a country that had regular electricity and could afford air conditioning. Even if money couldn’t buy happiness, it could buy comfort…or so I believed.
Turns out I was wrong; it’s not just about money. The politics of air conditioning are heating up and nowhere is this dynamic more on display than in Europe, a part of the world that should be able to afford comfort. While a recent heat wave is the nominal cause, there are deeper tensions to consider, as noted in a recent Wall Street Journal article [ [link removed] ]. Air conditioning has emerged as a political football in the scrum between European conservatives and liberals.
In the United Kingdom, conservatives called for the easing of regulations that make it hard for air conditioning to be installed in new housing; and in Spain, the right-wing Vox party has been attacking the country’s mainstream parties as failing to protect people from the heat. And in France, populist Marine Le Pen has called for an urgent “national air conditioning plan” in response to more than 2,000 heat related school closures [ [link removed] ] and apparently problematic conditions in nursing homes.
All of this had generated political backlash, mainly from those in power and environmentalists. The Wall Street Journal noted [ [link removed] ] that, in France, “Energy minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher said large-scale air conditioning would heat up streets with the machines’ exhaust, making heat waves worse” and went on to note she was “flanked by the perspiring prime minister, François Bayrou.” (Note: sweating French Prime Ministers are not a new phenomenon in France, see picture below, taken in 2015). The French media also joined the fight against air conditioning, warning that going from an air-conditioned room to the hot outdoors could trigger “thermal shock, resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness, and even respiratory arrest.”
Perhaps the best way to understand the different perspectives of the elites and the working class is a common refrain popularized during the Yellow Vest protests [ [link removed] ] against a carbon tax increase: “They’re worried about the end of the world. We’re worried about the end of the month.”
All of this reminds me of the debate around COVID during the height of the pandemic. Experts, focused on a very narrow problem, advocated a sweeping lockdown that closed schools and shut down the economy. But because they were so narrowly focused on a single problem – stopping the spread of a virus – they didn’t consider the wider consequences of the policies they pushed.
What was cost of kids not being in schools? How might constant mask-wearing impact social development for infants learning to communicate via facial reactions? What was the cost of a missed mammogram, or postponed dentist appointment? And what was the cost of people sitting at home, unable to earn a living, support their families, or pay their bills? While these costs might be unknowable, they certainly weren’t zero.
Similarly, European elites are experts that are increasingly focused on climate change may be missing the big picture. There are everyday realities that the people they govern face, such as the need to educate their children. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t think about climate change or the environment, but does it really make sense to pursue uncertain environmental benefits while incurring certain social and human costs? After all, let’s not forget that while Europe is restricting air conditioning and closing schools, China is building more coal-fired power plants than ever before and isn’t committing to reducing carbon emissions until 2026 at the earliest [ [link removed] ].
One of the clearest thinkers on this topic has been Bjorn Lomborg, someone I’ve had the pleasure of speaking with several times. The video below is from a conversation I had with him about his book False Alarm: How Climate Change Panic Costs Us Trillions, Hurts the Poor, and Fails to Fix the Planet [ [link removed] ].
In the end, the issue of air conditioning – like so many complex issues these days - comes down to an ever-increasing need for us to take a generalist approach to navigating uncertainty and to think clearly about complicated challenges. It’s critical we look through multiple lenses and make decisions with appropriate awareness of the inherent tradeoffs in every decision…because ultimately, leaders who want to stay in power must balance “end of the world” thinking with “end of the month” realities.
VIKRAM MANSHARAMANI is an entrepreneur, consultant, scholar, neighbor, husband, father, volunteer, and professional generalist who thinks in multiple-dimensions and looks beyond the short-term. Self-taught to think around corners and connect original dots, he spends his time speaking with global leaders in business, government, academia, and journalism. He’s currently the Chairman and CEO of Goodwell Foods, a manufacturer of private label frozen pizza. LinkedIn has twice listed him as its #1 Top Voice in Money & Finance, and Worth profiled him as one of the 100 Most Powerful People in Global Finance. Vikram earned a PhD From MIT, has taught at Yale and Harvard, and is the author of three books, The Making of a Generalist: An Independent Thinker Finds Unconventional Success in an Uncertain World [ [link removed] ], Think for Yourself: Restoring Common Sense in an Age of Experts and Artificial Intelligence [ [link removed] ] and Boombustology: Spotting Financial Bubbles Before They Burst [ [link removed] ]. Vikram lives in Lincoln, New Hampshire with his wife and two children, where they can usually be found hiking or skiing.
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