In Texas, it gets hot. The heat starts as early as May and lasts until Halloween. I'm not complaining. I'm just stating a fact: air conditioning is a necessity here.
There are lots of great things about Texas: no personal income tax, more personal freedom and less government intrusion, beautiful scenery, wonderful coasts (well, except during hurricanes and oil spills), and friendly people. But there's no doubt the heat can be a problem. That's why reading guys complaining that A/C created Republican dominance is just bullshit.
Love it or hate it, refrigerated cooling has been a major boon to the Republican Party. The advent of A.C. helped launch the massive Southern and Western population growth that’s transformed our electoral map in the last half century.
I kind of doubt that A/C alone brought us Ronald Reagan. Those Republican-leaning people would have dominated the states they lived in even if they weren't in the South.
And as callous as it sounds, I don't really care when some liberal wrings his hands because people stay inside under the A/C rather than sitting on the front porch yelling to the guy acros the street. Being able to sleep comfortably at night is worth all the community spirit in Texas, IMO.
The money quote comes near the end of the article:
Besides people changing their individual habits, do you feel like the government needs to intervene in the way we use air conditioning?
I think that we need to be changing a lot of the features of our society that have helped make us dependent on air conditioning in the first place. In the end, someone will have to put some very hard limits on energy consumption and emissions overall.
The short answer is: yes. Because liberals can't just change their own behavior to align with their thinking; they have to make everybody else do what they think they should.
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