Joe Klein is allowed to love warm weather, even when it "slouches toward humidity," but he can kiss my icy cold anatomy if he thinks I'm going to join in his silliness:
The unnecessary refrigeration of America has become a chronic disease. It seems to have gotten worse over the past few years, with thermostats routinely set at 68deg.F, and sometimes even 65 deg., in the (far too many) hotel rooms.
[. . .]
Schipper also estimates a savings of 4% for every degree warmer you push your thermostat. If you're set at 70deg.F now and move it to 75deg.—a comfortable, if slightly chilly number to my mind—you save 20% of the cost and energy of your air-conditioning bill.
If we're really going to get into this sacrifice thing, let's not stop at 5 degrees of cooling in summer. Let's make do with 5 fewer degrees of heat in the winter. Drive 20 percent slower and 20 percent less distance. Eat 25 percent less. Wear those clothes two or three times before washing them. As China and India use more and more energy and we use less and less, we'll meet somewhere in the middle, and the billions of us will all have the same kind of life. What a wonderful future.
Which, Klein is happy to tell us, is likely coming: "The next President will not have the luxury of that sort of indolence, and, happily, both Barack Obama and John McCain have been talking about conservation as a means to get our energy situation under control."
