Architecture could now ignore the local climate. The small, winter resort of Phoenix, Arizona, became a year-round attraction. Non-toxic and non-explosive, Freon was hailed as a “miracle.” It made the modernist skyscraper-with its sealed windows and heat-absorbing materials-possible. Everything changed with the invention of Freon in 1928. Chemical refrigerants like sulfur dioxide and methyl chloride filled most fridges and coolers, and leaks could kill a child, poison a hospital floor, even blow up a basement. Besides being financially impractical and culturally odd, it was also dangerous. Wilson’s impressive take offers climate-minded readers much to consider.Before World War II, almost no one had air-conditioning at home.
Controlling and destroying refrigerants is the best path forward to mitigate climate change, he writes, and his message is as urgent as it is idealistic: he urges readers “to unravel the political, economic, and cultural structures that produce our desires for narrow, individualized, personal comfort, to shift the narratives that put the responsibility on individual will instead of collective community” in the hopes that they’ll consider the implications of such everyday decisions as switching on an AC unit. He points out that low-income people, “especially those of color,” are less likely to have access to air conditioning but are more affected by the environmental consequences of climate change (Black women, he writes, “experience the highest rate of complications during pregnancy due to heat and pollution”). He focuses on the coolant Freon and related chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that have wrought havoc on the ozone layer, arguing that though air conditioning is seen as a necessity, it hasn’t improved people’s quality of life. Wilson, who teaches climate-themed writing and environmental justice at Queens College, debuts with a tour de force on the steep costs of living in a world that prioritizes personal comfort.
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