There’s a new book out called “Losing Our Cool: Uncomfortable Truths About Our Air-Conditioned World (and Finding New Ways to Get Through the Summer)” by Stan Cox.

Cox is trying to hype up his proposal to reduce American dependence on a/c (I assume in the hopes of selling more copies of his book), so he recently wrote an editorial in the Washington Post. It was all about how we should stop using a/c and thereby switch to a more eco-friendly lifestyle. (You can read the entire article here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/09/AR2010070902341_pf.html)

Frankly, I wasn’t impressed with his vision. In Cox’s utopia of a “post a/c world,” businesses close down for a month or two during the hottest part of the summer. And then, of course, we stop using our stoves and clothes dryers, and hang everything on clotheslines, etc., etc.

Get real.

To me that sounds like a return to a bygone era that I have no desire to revert to. I’m grateful to be alive in this era, at this time, and in this country. And I don’t think that makes me anti-nature or anti-Earth.

I love to run outside, and I love to come home at the end of a run on a muggy Michigan day and cool down near my a/c.

And then there are the times when I crave a/c and can’t imagine how miserable I’d be without it. Like earlier this month when my husband I vacationed at his mother’s home in Cape Cod. It was 96 degrees, humid, and breezeless. We wouldn’t have been able to sleep at night without a/c.

But perhaps my example of craving personal comfort doesn’t help to make a national case for preserving a/c. So, help me out, HVAC industry! Tell me your reasons, justifications, and stories about your grateful customers to prove why we should preserve our comfort and our a/c.