This week’s heat wave drives home a critical point: New Yorkers need air conditioning. Which is why it’s so disheartening that one of the climate-change crowd’s chief remedies for rising temperatures is: less A/C.
That would be the result of efforts to limit the use of air conditioners and make it more expensive to use them by driving up the price of electricity. And it’s just one of the numerous costs that tend to get overlooked by warming activists.
Fact is, the cause of this week’s heat — climate change or some evil but temporary weather pattern — is still subject to debate (never mind claims that “the science is settled”). And the lack of consensus should serve as a loud warning about how to respond to rising temperatures. Or, at least, about the need to assess the costs of any action honestly.
For the short term, the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Department of Health are offering sensible measures. Much of it boils down to two words: air conditioning.
“New Yorkers who are vulnerable should use air conditioning to stay cool,” an advisory reads. “Go to a place that has air conditioning if it is not available at home.” They’re also urging folks to “drink water at regular interval” and “check in on vulnerable friends, family members and neighbors.” Sound advice.
What’s more, the city has 425 cooling centers — air-conditioned sites open to the public. Great.
For the long run, though, Mayor Bloomberg’s a climate-change true believer. He’s prepared a “sustainability” blueprint, called PlaNYC 2030, which maps steps for the city in preparation for warmer temps, among other trends. (Oddly, it didn’t call for more power companies in the city to service the additional air-conditioning needs.) Last month, Hizzoner unveiled another plan — this one, meant to protect against rising seas that will result from warming, would cost some $20 billion.
Many of the candidates for mayor (Chris Quinn and Bill Thompson, for example) are also urging action in the face of more heat and higher sea levels. And President Obama, too, has been on a climate-change kick. In June, he rolled out a renewed war on fossil fuels — particularly coal, which produces heat-trapping CO2.
Not one of these pols seems to care much about the costs.
Yet Team Bloomberg’s push for A/C this week shows just why climate-change thinking often seems based on, well, hot air: Air conditioning may feel great and saves lives, but you’ve generally got to burn fossil fuel to generate the electricity to run it. And doing so, supposedly, accelerates global warming.
Indeed, to slow the growth of worldwide temperatures, Bloomberg & Co. might suggest we turn off our A/C, not turn it up.
As for Obama, his war on coal will drive up electric rates, further discouraging the use of air conditioners.
If the climate folks are right, and we have to live with less A/C even as the planet gets warmer, the least they could do is acknowledge the true cost — whether in lives lost to heat exposure or in mere discomfort.
If it turns out they’re wrong about the warming, after all, all that sacrifice will have been in vain.
This is what happens when you play down the costs of taking action and focus blindly on the potential consequences of inaction. Critics like Bjorn Lomborg make similar points on a far grander scale, arguing that “the costs of dealing with climate change poorly will be much higher than the benefits which will accrue.”
Of course, the more fundamental problem is predicting the future in the first place. Obama noted last month that “the 12 warmest years in recorded history have all come in the last 15 years.” But The New York Times recently admitted that warming has leveled off over the past 15 years, “even as greenhouse gases have accumulated . . . at a record pace.”
Meanwhile, a new nine-year study of polar ice is warning of “uncertainty to extrapolations of future [ice] mass loss and sea-level rise.” That is, exactly what Bloomberg, Quinn, Thompson, et al., are planning for.
New Yorkers are hoping for a bit of relief from this week’s heat, possibly, the weathermen say, by early next week. After that, of course, it’s anybody’s guess — even if the climate folks are planning as if it’s not.
abrodsky@nypost.com