Wilson’s conclusion not only summarizes the worldview of the fashionably “woke.” It reflects their panic. Specifically, those policies would involve “ensuring that the most vulnerable among the planet’s human inhabitants can keep cool through better access to public cooling centers, shade-giving trees, safe green spaces, water infrastructure to cool, and smart design,” he wrote.

He believes in enacting policies that emphasize public comfort over personal comfort. Wilson’s solution combines the cultural and technological. “Renewable energy infrastructure can take us only so far,” he wrote. But he believes the ultimate solution lies beyond science. Wilson offers some technological alternatives. Wilson’s demand for others to become comfortable with discomfort not only ignores the spirit that led to human progress. As air conditioning became more widespread and available for homes, it “conveyed class status” that “often fell starkly along the color line, too, especially in the South” while “cleaving the world into civilized cooling and barbaric heat,” he wrote. Wilson describes his recent book, After Cooling: On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort, as “a look at air conditioning’s contribution to climate violence, and a critique of the American addiction to personal comfort.” Unpardonable Sins and Permissible SolutionsĪccording to that critique, inventors developed what Wilson calls “mechanical cooling” to help business. Nevertheless, he teaches “climate-themed writing and environmental justice” at CUNY’s Queens College.

Wilson has no training in climate science or mechanical engineering. His essay shows how such “woke” dogmas as critical race theory, equity, and the condemnation of both capitalism and “white supremacy” meet in another “woke” doctrine: environmental extremism. In a recent article for Time magazine, Wilson wrote about how air conditioning will destroy the planet. So implies Eric Dean Wilson, an instructor and graduate student at the City University of New York. Even as summer’s hottest months approach. Personal air conditioning represents racism and “white supremacy.” It opposes social, economic, and environmental justice. In the Brave New World of “Woke” Perfection, you won’t be allowed to keep your air conditioning.

After Cooling by Eric Dean Wilson