The A/C Ph.D.

Ray Arsenault, an historian and professor at USF St. Petersburg, is famous for two nicknames: He's "Dad" to former CL copy editor Anne Arsenault, and he's the "Air Conditioning Man" to his colleagues. In a 1984 issue of The Journal of Southern History, Arsenault published "The End of the Long Hot Summer: The Air Conditioner and Southern Culture," the first critical history of the machine's impact in the South. Ever since, journalists from around the country have called around this time of year and asked him to weigh in on the state of A/C. We did the same, but first, we sent Arsenault a copy of Stan Cox's story.

Cox is saying we need to rethink whether we should be using A/C at all. Isn't the horse already out of the barn on that one, at least in the South and certainly in Florida?
Well, I think that's almost certainly true. We might wish it to be otherwise, but I think what he's trying to say is that air conditioning has built up unreasonable expectations of modality and comfort — that we can go from 72 degrees to 72 degrees to 72 degrees with only a few minor interruptions.

When did A/C become commonplace?
It was a fairly long evolution of thinking of air conditioning as a quality control device used primarily in industry and then in specialized areas like movie theaters, but the idea of actually having air-conditioned homes and air-conditioned automobiles is largely a product of the 1950s. … so air conditioning was really a half-century old before this age of "comfort cooling" became an accepted fact of life, not a privilege.

That's certainly where it's ended up. If the government were to start regulating air conditioning (as Cox suggests), I think there could be pandemonium in the streets — especially in Florida.
Well, I think that's probably the case. I think people's mental health, to some degree, rests on having access to air conditioning. … The average age now in the United States is 36 — I think in Florida it's 38 — so well over half the population has lived their entire lives in an air-conditioned world. I think it would be hard for them to imagine [life without it].

That could also be where the hole was before you wrote your article — it had become second nature, wasn't something people were looking at critically at all.
It was like the air they breathed. I was almost embarrassed to write that piece; I was shocked as I got deeper and deeper into the research that no one else had ever done this.

Why do you think that is?
It's not the kind of topic that a historian would've looked at prior to [the late 1970s]. … When I started fooling around with it, everybody thought it was so obvious, as I did. I was a little embarrassed — I've been known in the profession as the "Air Conditioner Man" ever since. My colleagues tease me. … No matter what else I write ever, I'll always be the "Air Conditioner Man." I'm like a typecast actor, like Captain Kirk.

It could be worse, right? At least it's cool to be the "Air Conditioning Man."
A lot of hot air, but it's cool I guess. …But air conditioning certainly is a major factor in the way people live. It's so intertwined now with our architecture. … high-rise buildings, all the public institutions, from hospitals to schools to libraries; the built environment is now so intimately connected with air conditioning, it's hard to imagine that we could ever disassemble it.

What would happen if we suddenly were without A/C?
I think if it were 48 hours or even a week, people would see it as a crisis — they would adapt. It would be a problem that needed to be solved, and once it was solved, we'd go back to life as usual. But if you told someone that there was no more air conditioning for the next five years, you would have something akin to a social revolution [laughs]. Just common sense tells you that if people were brought up expecting to have this kind of technological relief at nearly every turn, and when they don't get it, I think they're going to feel put upon. If they'd never had it, like people did for generations, they'd learn how to adapt.

It would really change the fabric of our culture. But I guess that's what it did in the first place, right?
Sure, but I think we've now built these things under the assumption that we'll always have it. If we don't have it, I think the economic impact could be almost catastrophic. … Think about it: The shopping mall, which I and others call the "Cathedral of Air-Conditioned Culture," would be unusable. They'd simply shut down. … Now maybe that's what we need — we have way too many people here. [Laughs] If we want to get back to 3 or 4 million, cut out air conditioning; make Florida for the real Floridians.

If you can't rough it, get out!
Yeah.

This article appears in Jun 20-26, 2007.