The Cost

You might have noticed that I was out for a bit. I wonder if something happened over here? I don't remember. In any case, here is an interesting piece about how much it costs to provide air-conditioning in Afghanistan. Reading this, a lot of things seem absurd to me. I feel bad telling a poor soldier serving in Afghanistan to just deal with the heat, but..... I tell hundreds of teenagers to deal with unheated, unair-conditioned schools every day. It isn't Afghanistan though.

One thing that always strikes me about going back to America is the absurd use of air-conditioning. It might just be my mother's house. It probably has a lot to do with the way we build our houses. But it all seems like a bit much to me. My house now in Kyoto, which is notoriously hot in the summer, has two air-conditioners which I never use. Their filters are still sitting out from when I cleaned them. I use a fan and carry a towel around with me. That is about it. When you think about all of the things our world has to go through for power, air-conditioning and dryers and the like start to seem a bit frivolous. Especially when we are cutting the social safety net to threads at home so people can have air-conditioning somewhere where most of the country doesn't think we still need to be.