The New Puritanism

William Saletan has an article posted at Slate discussing how air conditioning is creating a false consciousness about global warming -- thus leading us not to do enough to counteract it. There is also a strong sense of shame and blame at us for being so doughy and fragile and hedonistic as to need air conditioning.

Yesterday, CNN also had some loud fellow on with his own commentary show where he essentially said that people's wimpiness at using air conditioning is causing global destruction.

From the Slate article:

Based on government data, Stan Cox, a scientist at the Land Institute, calculates that air-conditioning the average U.S. home requires 3,400 pounds of carbon-dioxide production per year.

That's about equivalent to the CO2 output of 1/6th of a typical sedan. Instead of going on about manliness, they could purchase a small-car allotment Terrapass, and make up for not only their own carbon production, but also a fair bit more carbon production.

I take it that eventually, assuming everyone jumped on the boat, Terrapass might not work, or might need to find some new technology for reducing carbon presence in the atmosphere -- but I'd take that problem any day over our current ones.

In the meantime, this strikes me as the pot-smoking, dirty-dancing, free love generation -- the same people that made fun of religious puritans in movies like Harper Valley PTA and Footloose -- now growing up and realising that there's something morally wrong about pleasure, so it's not enough to fix the problem, but one must also suffer while doing so.