One of my great pleasures in younger days was travelling by train, not with an Ian Allen notebook and an anorak, but simply to enjoy the countryside from those lovely old coaches with windows that opened so that you could smell the sulphuric tang of the engine’s exhaust mixed with farmyard, and the bits of sooty grit got into your eyes and hair.  

Along came ‘modernisation’ and that boring conformity which now blights our lives, the classic railway coaches were phased out and the new ones had plate glass panoramic windows sealed shut against the fresh natural air outside.  We were headed back towards the early nineteenth century when railway builders were told that speeds of 50 mph would cause nose bleeds, and that trains could not go through tunnels because people would be asphyxiated.  The travelling public were, I suppose, considered too stupid to understand that if a train is travelling at 100 mph the windows would have to be closed.  Most of the time these high speed trains were crawling along at 15 or 20 mph, so the danger of asphyxiation was pretty limited.

Now we’ve been led to believe that fresh air is bad for us, the French in particular have a morbid fear of ‘courants d’air’. We close the windows in our cars and turn the air conditioning to ‘arctic’, we sit shivering in cold air conditioned offices when the temperature outside is a pleasant 30’ or so.  We sit and inhale the recirculated exhalations and germs of our colleagues, the odours of their bodies and their food.

Buildings are cooled to unnatural temperatures, compromising our ability to adjust normally to seasonal changes in ambient temperatures and consequently lowering our bodies’ resistance to illness.  Massive air conditioning plants pump heat and noise into the atmosphere, worsening the global warming that threatens the planet, depleting the ozone layer, and polluting at the point of energy production.  It’s the classic vicious circle, as excessive air conditioning creates a greater and self fulfilling demand for further cooling, ad infinitum. Except that it can’t go on ‘ad infinitum’, because sooner or later we will run out of energy.

I can accept that in some places, where the daytime summer temperatures can hit the 40’s with humidity of 90%, and where the external air is badly polluted, for example Mexico City, Bangkok, Beijing, then a little cooling might not be a bad thing, but it is invariably overdone, with a massive difference between the inside and the outside temperatures. Some countries have had the good sense to legislate the maximum difference allowed, an example others should follow.

The air conditioning that we use unthinkingly and automatically in our cars burns extra fuel, pumping pollutants into the atmosphere as the load places up to 25% additional demand on the engine’s power, not to mention our wallets at the current price of fuel.

Next time you use air conditioning, think of the terrible impact on the environment, and ask yourself if it is really necessary.  You might be surprised at the answer.