People always are taken aback when I tell them I live without television and without air conditioning, even during the punishing summers of Tennessee. Why, they want to know? There's never really enough time to tell them, so I make something up about not liking the way my AC air smells. Or something.
But the real story is that I think it's important to know what's going on in one's environment. Not using AC to blunt my perception of the climate, I have no problem admitting that summers are getting hotter. I feel them getting hotter. I suffer them getting hotter. I know, and no one living in the cushioned comfort of air conditioning can tell me anything different because I live "out there," even though I am right in amongst those who do not feel it.
The effects of a warming climate here in Tennessee, at my house? Oh my God, the suffocating heat. The lassitude. I can only exercise in the very early morning. I wait for the coming of dusk. I sleep too much. I feel tired, sometimes with an iron tiredness that feels as if I have been worked over with a hammer, inch by excruciating inch. On the other hand, I am more than normally grateful for the invigorating blast of cold air when I enter a store. I feel myself reviving, almost able to think about new ventures or ... well ... any action at all.
I do think that policymakers should get out of their AC'd cubicles long enough to feel what the heat is doing to us right now. Maybe then they could separate themselves from their ideologies long enough to start really working on the problem. But they have to feel the breath of fire on their skins first, I guess, and that doesn't seem to be happening.