LosingOurCool 

The Book

See the Table of Contents

Losing Our Cool in the Media:

On the last day of summer, 2011:

NPR Morning Edition

Most recently:  ABCNews.com, Chicago Tribune, Hartford Courant, London's Daily Mail

As well as Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ,  FOX Business, and KWCH-TV

Stan Cox in the Washington Post on "D.C. without A.C."

New York Times: "No Air-Conditioning and Happy"

Cox in the Los Angeles Times on how we live and work in the A/C world

Chicago Sun-Times: Mark Brown tries to convince his wife to turn of the A/C

Hear an interview with NPR's Marketplace, as well as some tips

"I'll see your snowstorm and raise you two heat waves": The odds on odd weather

Kevin Canfield on Losing Our Cool in the Los Angeles Times

Watch the KSN-TV report, also seen on the Weather Channel and NBC affiliates across the U.S.  

An interview with Ryan Brown of Salon.com

Cox on the A/C life in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Tom Condon on Losing Our Cool in the Hartford Courant

Cox talks with National Geographic News Watch

Hear "Chilling Facts About Air Conditioners", a one-hour interview and call-in with Stan Cox on the NPR program On Point

Rob Sharp in The Independent (UK): Cold Comfort

Cox answers adversaries via CounterPunch

The Wichita Eagle on Losing Our Cool

Losing Our Cool interview: video on MSNBC

A review by the Dallas Morning News

Hear “Life without Air-Conditioning” on The Takeaway

An article on Losing Our Cool in the Boston Globe.

A Minneapolis Star-Tribune interview

An interview with the National Post‘s Joe O’Connor

Macleans: How Air-Conditioning Changed the World

An A/C  Q&A with Discovery’s Planet Green

How to stay cool without A/C even in America's hot zones

A CBC Radio interview

The Hartford Courant: Air-Conditioning is Sapping Our Society

Paul Cox: "Birth of the Air Conditioner"

A review on the Cleveland Plain Dealer site

A Globe and Mail interview on staying cool in Canada

A May 19 story in the Salina Journal.

See a slideshow on air-conditioning and energy efficiency that Stan Cox presented to a green-building conference sponsored by Menerga-Slovenia on 25 November 2010 in Maribor, Slovenia:

.ppt file (1.8 Mb). See that your 'View' is set to 'Notes Pages'.

Sick Planet

Sick Planet was published in 2008 by London's  Pluto Press.  If you judge a book by its cover and if, instead of making you feel at one with nature, this cover makes you feel a bit queasy, that's intentional -- and the book will have the same effect.  Sick Planet tells nine stories in which the global capitalist economy turns the well-intentioned efforts of humanity inside-out.  By the tenth chapter, it will be clear that neither organic chicken soup nor full medical coverage can cure what ails this planet.  Read more about what's inside Sick Planet

"Sick Planet is a must-read for anyone concerned about matters of health and survival – that is everyone." -- Vandana Shiva

"Cox’s revelatory book is a Silent Spring for the 21st century." -- Jeffrey St. Clair

Some of Stan Cox's recent writing

More articles

Response?

Write to t.stan@cox.net

Stan Cox

“This is an important book. The history of air- conditioning is really the history of the world’s energy and climate crises, and by narrowing the focus Stan Cox makes the big picture comprehensible. He also suggests remedies—which are different from the ones favored by politicians, environmentalists, and appliance manufacturers, not least because they might actually work.” – David Owen of The New Yorker

“What I like about Cox’s book is that he isn’t an eco-nag or moralist . . . I agree with Cox when he says less climate control and more contact with the real ecosphere will make for a happier and healthier country.” — Tom Condon, Hartford Courant

“As Stan Cox details in his excellent new book, Losing Our Cool, air conditioning has been a major force in shaping western society.” – Bradford Plumer, The National

“A top pick for any library strong in environmental science” – California Bookwatch

“Describing himself as neither an ascetic or ‘econag,’ [Cox] examines energy consumption trends and issues in economic, health, and global contexts. Arguing that more efficient air-conditioners are not the answer, he describes more ecologically-sound cooling alternatives. The treatment is serious despite the popsicles on the cover.” – Sci-Tech Book News

“Cox challenges us to redefine our personal comfort in the context of environmental responsibility. He acknowledges that we have built a world around air-conditioning, and he successfully advocates controlling our indoor climate by using both earlier cooling methods and new technologies. Cox makes a strong case for cutting energy use, redirecting our focus on cooling spaces to cooling people, and restoring the balance between our indoor and outdoor lives. Recommended for readers interested in environmental issues and technologies” – Library Journal

“Cox writes in simple, direct prose. He spaces out statistics with anecdotes and fun facts, making a potentially boring subject interesting.” – Timothy Smith, Washington Post

“Those who have written extensively about air conditioning — a small number of scientists, historians and engineering experts — agree with many of Cox’s conclusions.” – Kevin Canfield, Los Angeles Times

“Cox’s book challenges the notion that health and air conditioning go hand-in-hand, with a look at sickness from indoor air, at the connection between obesity and our indoor lives, and at the malaise that Richard Louv called nature deficit disorder in his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods. But Cox’s main disturbing point is that energy-intensive air conditioning creates a vicious cycle in which more fossil fuel pollution ratchets up temperatures even higher.” – Rob Sharp, The Independent (UK)

“One wonders how sitting in his 90-degree home in Salina, Kansas, Cox was able to gather so many mind-numbing facts and statistics without losing his cool. But gather he did, and the outcome is 255 pages full of facts, figures and brief forays into the history and development of the country, from Arizona to Detroit, from poor neighborhoods to wealthy ones. The author dances from hot environmental topics to well-known societal changes, linking an overdependence on energy-draining devices to the decrease in live socializing.” – Sarah Berkowitz, Mother Nature Network

“The author promises not to be preachy, and keeps his word.” – Susan Ager, Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Losing Our Cool is the kind of book we’ve seen a lot of lately—like ‘Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World’, or ‘Sugar: A Bittersweet History’—that ascribes momentous consequences to otherwise mundane things. In the case of air conditioning, it’s true: this invention has changed how people live, determined the population patterns of entire continents, and affected everything from when we have babies to why we feel so tired in the morning. It’s gone from being a salvation, literally sparing lives, to a possible health risk to an environmental demon because it could alter the planet’s climate.” – Cathy Gulli, Macleans

“I’ve been hearing a lot about this new book, ‘Losing Our Cool’, by Stan Cox  . . . ’Losing Our Cool’, I gather from articles and interviews, is all about how air-conditioning is largely a blight, fueling the advance of civilization into the desert, atomizing inner-city communities, and even aiding the rise of big government. Cox is right on all these points.” – Jonah Goldberg, National Review

Order
Losing Our Cool

and in Korean translation by
Nanjange Books:

 

"At the cusp of total ecological collapse, we stand in need of a corrective dose of 'radical' economics if we're to turn our ship around.   Cox's Sick Planet will be useful reading for anyone who seeks to grab the ship's wheel and to persuade others to join them. His book is a short, readable activist's crib which ranges fluently across the environmental costs of bloated corporate healthcare (and the human costs of overprescription and phoney medicalization), to the problem of industrial agriculture and "better living through chemistry."