Kudos to Stephen Buranyi for drawing attention to the growth of air conditioning worldwide and the accompanying taste for cold in a time of global warming (Blowing cold and hot, The long read, 29 August). Having lived and worked in the American south, I can attest there are even more pernicious dimensions to this addiction to cold. Restaurants and bars are kept uncomfortably chilly, thus encouraging higher levels of consumption (heat dampens the desire to eat), fuelling not only profits but the obesity crisis.

Cold has become a mark of prestige: the fancier the establishment, be it office block or shopping mall, the colder it is likely to be. Anecdotally, moving between these absurd temperature extremes several times a day seems to increase the incidence of colds. When I requested that the AC in my workplace (a public university) be set to a warmer level, the response of the facilities staff was to provide a heater for my office. Here in New York, a hotel on my street keeps a roaring fire in the lobby – in August – while the ambient indoor temperature is freezing. All this amounts to what Richard Seymour has recently called “climate sadism” – a form of masochism outwardly and ostentatiously directed, consumptive and destructive madness. May we find ways not to get caught up in its drive.

Emanuela Bianchi

New York

• When I was a legal adviser to the Export Credits Guarantee Department back in the 1970s I was told by an architect that he had been retained by the ruler of one of the Gulf states to build a tower office block along the lines of those now disfiguring the City of London. He asked his client where he would like the power station as the block would consume inordinate amounts of electricity for air conditioning.

The architect pointed out to his client that it would be more sensible to keep to traditional styles of building, like the medieval souks, which are kept relatively cool by judicious circulation of air.

It seems that the architect’s advice was not heeded. We now have extraordinary developments such as Dubai, which must be consuming energy at a prodigious rate.

Dr Anthony J Cooper

Great Shelford, Cambridgeshire

• Stephen Buranyi says “the warmer it gets, the more we use air conditioning”. He is right for the richest of us. Others have to cope with such temperatures, or die. The 1995 Chicago heatwave led to 739 heat-related deaths over five days, of the mainly elderly poor who could not afford air conditioning and did not open windows for fear of crime.

Comfort really is a social construct. People adapt to those conditions they normally occupy, and if they become uncomfortable, they change themselves, or their environment, to return to comfort.

In a world of rising energy prices, tanking economies, grid failures and more extreme weather events we have to think differently. Imagine a future where buildings are run for as much of the day and year as possible, on local natural energy, from sun and wind, and only when absolutely necessary are they heated and cooled. This is a revolutionary idea in societies where people fear crime and modern buildings are designed with too much glazing, and no natural ventilation and consequently overheat. For you, in your own home, my advice is to insulate your roof, shade and open your windows, and get security grilles for them. Only when this strategy fails, move rooms, locations or, in extremis, use mechanical cooling. Simples.

Susan Roaf

(Emeritus professor of architectural engineering, Heriot Watt University), Oxford

• Your article does not mention the decades of scientific experiments proving we do not need AC, if we design or add the right construction.

The Building Research Station in Watford has an experimental, comfortable, office block with no AC. It works by having a construction of exposed “high thermal mass”, solid plaster on concrete ceilings, floors, walls. At night cool air flows through to build up a store of “coolth”, so no noise, or bad air problem in daytime with windows closed.

Usual office and modern home construction has the opposite of high thermal mass. The sun’s heat comes in and has nowhere to go but to raise the air to stifling temperatures.

In the experimental building the windows are shaded to reduce over-heating, and the lesser heat soaks away into the heavy construction, leaving air at moderate temperature.

The same effect is felt in solid brick or concrete homes. My own 1900 flat has been very cool all night and day with heavy construction, sucking away the heat. My son’s modern flat has been far too hot, with very high winter insulation, covered with only 1cm of plasterboard, nowhere for heat to soak away.

Regulations are going to be changed to make low winter energy buildings cooler in summer.

Anthony Edwards

Retired architect, London

• Stephen Buranyi’s article did not cover modern developments. In summer air conditioning can easily be powered directly by the sun via solar panels. In winter solar power stored in an electric car’s batteries can extract two and a half times more heat from the outside as used to power the air conditioner, thus reducing carbon dioxide emissions from gas central heating units.

Donald Hawthorn

Ruddington, Nottinghamshire

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