While my adopted country literally burns—and by “literally” I do mean “literally”; as I write this, the count is 38 active wildfires, with 50,000 acres already in ashes, in a country the size of Texas—I find myself thinking about last summer’s trip to my native country, where, thanks to the extreme air conditioning habits of even my most progressive, environmentally conscientious American friends, Concha and I routinely slept under down comforters. In August. In the subtropics.
Mind you, I like air conditioning. On a soppy, sweltering summer day in the Carolinas, I find stepping into a chilly house not just physically invigorating, but anthropologically amazing. It’s nice to belong to a species that is capable of so dramatically altering the domestic environment to its advantage. I’m reminded of the first time I flew into Phoenix, Arizona: I couldn’t get over how the dusty desert suddenly gave way to a sprawling space-age metropolis flowered with deep blue pools and bright green fairways. Here this utterly inhospitable moonscape, where only the most dangerous species could survive—rattlers, scorpions, prickly pears—had been transformed into a popular lifestyle destination for people like my retired grandmother, who didn’t seem very dangerous at all, except of course when she was driving, or voting.
On the ground, one reconsiders. The unceasing HVAC drone, the blistering heat rising up off the acres of asphalt, the patio misters absurdly spraying water into the wind…spend a little time in a place like Phoenix, and you might get to thinking that just because humans can do some impressive thing, doesn’t mean we should do it. Maybe if we were better at moderation, but we’re not. One generation celebrates some revolutionary, game-changing development—internal combustion, fertilizer, disposable flatware—and the next generation chokes on it. What would my forebears say if they saw me sleeping under a down comforter in Charleston in August? Would they be amazed, or disgusted? Would they think I was immensely fortunate, or horribly decadent? It’s 85 degrees outside, and I’m under a comforter. Am I a baby? Do I need a blankie?
Here in Andalusia, for now, extreme air conditioning tends to be the exception rather than the rule. Over here I only experience it at work, where the thermostatting habits of some of my British colleagues can make my American friends look positively miserly. When temperatures are pushing 100 degrees outside, you’ll find more than a few students wearing fleece inside.
I could tell you how bonkers I think that is, but if I’m honest, I definitely prefer it to the other extreme. I know this, because I get the other extreme as soon as I arrive home. Concha and I have a split AC unit in the living room, but it is only used in emergencies, for an hour or two at a time. It is never simply left on. This is not because we can’t afford to run the unit more, or because we’re thinking about our carbon footprint. It’s because Concha is Andalusian. She is not accustomed to extreme air conditioning, or even what I would call humane air conditioning, and she is not interested in becoming accustomed to it. Like the parents who phone the language academy to make sure their children aren’t being seated too close to the HVAC vent, she seems to even kind of mistrust it. Air conditioning is bad for the throat, she says. It causes headaches, skin problems, mood disorders.
If you want to see a mood disorder, see me when I’m trying to get some writing done and I feel even just a little bit hot and sticky. With time I’ve developed adaptive strategies that, until this summer at least, have made things more or less bearable. I go barefoot to make the most of the marble floors. I play the persiana blinds against the sun like an old pro. I try not to move around too much, and whenever I do move, I take my pedestal fan with me, so compulsively that Concha once wondered if I was having an affair with the thing.
Above all, in summers past I’ve managed the heat of the day by dreaming of night. That’s when el fresquito, the cool breeze off the not so distant Atlantic, might transform a scorching 95-degree afternoon into a glorious 65-degree evening. Over the years el fresquito taught me patience, even humility. It’s summer, I’d tell myself. Of course it’s hot. Anyway, productivity is overrated. What’s the hurry? Nobody’s waiting to publish this stuff. Just hang on. El fresquito is coming. And more often than not, it would come. Just as the sun dropped behind the cedars in the plaza, the breeze would kick up—brisk, brassy, charged with energy. Then Concha and I would gleefully throw open the windows, prepare a light supper, and head out to the terrace for our evening repast. Afterwards, I’d make my bed there, in “la zona chill-out.” There were never any bugs to speak of, and it was usually cool enough, even in August, for me to actually need—go figure—a light blanket. Snugly tucked in, with the Perseids flaring above and bursts of late-night flamenco sounding from alleys below, I was a happy camper, doing the thing I knew I would miss most about this place if ever we should leave it—sleeping outside, under the stars.
This year, things are different. It’s been hot and still even late into the night—too hot to sleep outside. We haven’t been dining on the terrace, but on the couch, with the fan in our face. We’ve kept the windows open, but there’s not been much breeze in the air, just an acrid smoky smell, the smell of cropland stubble smoldering in the fall. It is not fall, of course. It is not even August. That smell…it must be Andalusia, burning.
Is this a fluke? The new normal? A prelude to something much worse? I don’t know. I only know I’m hearing people who’ve always made do without air conditioning talk about getting air conditioning, while people who’ve always used air conditioning in moderation talk about leaving it on all day. Just as it did with fast food and 24-7 commuter commerce, my adopted country looks all set to take up another bad habit of my native one, and I can’t help wondering if we’ve reached a kind of tipping point, if this suicidal vicious circle we’ve got going—it’s hotter, make it colder; now it’s even hotter, make it even colder—is about to kick into overdrive.
What can I say, though? In a few days, I’ll board a transatlantic airliner, burn 30,000 some-odd gallons of jet fuel on my way to the suffocatingly hot and hazy subtropics, where, when it’s time to go to bed, I’ll bury myself under a comforter. For an hour or two, I might lie there worrying how weird and wrong this is—and then, like as not, I’ll sleep like a baby.