- Michael M.: Too much going on. Life in flux, etc..
- Sunshine: Wow, I was soooo happy to see a new post in my rss reader. I was hopping this is already the comeback! :(...
- gandalf: Did you only get caffeine through Dr.p or did you drink coffee as well? I’m interested, since...
- neeka: nine kilos… wow… :) happy holidays to you, michael, and to all your loved ones! veronica
- m: It was a bargain. No strings attached.
Ljubljana, Slovenia.
Maribor, Slovenia.
Portoroz, Slovenia.
• AlienMelon
• Burger.si
• Heck
• Izklop
• si.blogs
• Sloblogi
• Blogorola
• Natalija Verboten
Europe’s climate in 2071: Get ready to feel the heat. (Click for original)
I don’t know about you guys, but I spent most of last week repeatedly having my face melt off like that Nazi dude at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark. It was wicked hot. But then, that wasn’t really the problem. It may have been hotter than cinnamon balls outside, but the real problem is that here you actually feel it.
I grew up in New Orleans, and have lived in places like Atlanta, Savannah, Houston and Memphis. These are cities that get seriously hot. But I was never in agony thanks to the glories of near-universal air conditioning. Not only that: Our house in New Orleans also came equipped with ceiling fans in every room, and since no one there is scared of drafts, you could actually turn them on and cool down. Basically, the only time you would feel the heat was when you stepped out of your car somewhere and walked into a building.
But it seems that in large swathes of Europe, there’s widespread hostility to air conditioning and a strong belief in relying on natural methods. That means building energy efficient houses and using stuff like double shutters and other techniques that work well until it actually gets really hot. When the mercury starts pushing into the 40s (or 100s in Fahrenheit)… well, then people start cooking to death. That was actually the case in 2003, when the wealthiest parts of Europe lost 35,000 people to a heat wave. To put that in perspective: That’s the entire principality of Liechtenstein, dead, because of a lack of air conditioning and general carelessness. Think about that number, folks: 35,000. That’s ten times more deaths than the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
About a year later, in June 2004, two scuttlebutts named Fredrik Bergstrom and Robert Gidehag, of the Stockholm-based think tank Timbro, published a gloating article entitled “EU versus USA.” (pdf) Their conclusion: If the EU were a state in the U.S., it would be among the poorest. As conservative commentators gleefully noted:
…In the U.S. a large 45.9% of the “poor” own their homes, 72.8% have a car and almost 77% have air conditioning, which remains a luxury in most of Western Europe.
Anyone who has spent time in Europe will see the problem here. And it was the reason why I had such a rough week last week. Namely, many Europeans just flat-out don’t like air conditioning. It’s not that it’s an unaffordable luxury or something: they just fucking hate it. They think it spreads germs and many of them will immediately start complaining the minute you turn it on. So using A/C as a measure of wealth is ridiculous. I could just as easily write a report tracking the number of bidets in Europe and the United States. I only have anecdotal evidence, of course, but since I’ve never seen one in the U.S. and see them in virtually every house and apartment here, I’m willing to guess that Slovenia has more per capita than America. And if there’s any Slovenian think tank ready to sponsor me, I’ll gladly write my own dumbass paper and include something like this:
“Although many Slovenes enjoy the advantages of both a toilet and a bidet, the bidet remains a never-to-be-experienced luxury for the average American. The average American is forced to make do with simple toilet paper to clean their perineum, whilst Slovenes can scrub themselves clean immediately after vacating their bowels.”
It would be a sensation I tell you. I would also point out that Slovenes have a higher rate of home ownership than Americans (82% vs 69%) and I would stress how this is clearly a sign of greater wealth and prosperity. The original authors make a big deal of home ownership in their paper.
And the rest of the report is full of similar flaws in thinking. You almost can’t believe that it was written in Europe. And you definitely can’t believe that these guys got paid to write it. For example, isn’t it safe to say that car ownership is lower in Europe because public transportation is generally bodacious, especially relative to the United States? And not because Europeans are dirt-poor hobos?
If I look at the table of domestic appliances on page 16 I also notice some things that could use explaining. For example, we own a dryer. Now ask me if we use it. No, we don’t. Thanks for asking. Want to know why? Because my wife prefers hanging our laundry up outside. It smells better, she says. It’s fresher, she insists. She also hates microwaves and would never dream of using it to prepare a meal. I’m getting anecdotal again, but I’m pretty certain that these kind of things go a long way towards explaining why Americans have so many more appliances than Europeans. In short, many of these things are not economic questions but social ones. And frankly, anyone who thinks that the average Swede is worse off than the poorest American is a jackass. I’m looking at you, Timbro.
I’m reminded of a story I heard a while back. A professor in Maribor invited some exchange students from Virginia over for summer courses. He later told me that the Americans and Slovenes constantly fought over the temperature of the classroom. The Americans wanted to turn the air conditioning on full blast; the Slovenes kept insisting it be turned off. One of the Virginians ended up going back home because it got to be “too hot” for him. Nevermind that Virginia is hotter than Maribor (summer average in Maribor: 20°C/68°F, summer average in Virginia: 30°C/86°F) it’s that he actually had to deal with it.
That’s just a different experience altogether.
Comments
Comments for this post are closed.
I would also say another point that would invalidate Timbro’s comments is the fact that many of the poor, as well as middle class people in the USA don’t “really” own their property. Well they own it so long as they keep(and are able to) paying the mortgage.
I would say the housing numbers for EU would be much higher if “Credit” was as popular as it is in the US.
“It smells better” Fresher
As for the weather as long as it isn’t too humid I think it’s not that bad. After living in Korea for a year, the humidity everywhere else seems not as bad.
Damn…it seems Wordpress doesn’t display anything between arrows.
Here is the part that got cut out:
“It smells better” - I would have to agree with that comment. I’ve noticed sometimes clothes dried in a dryer don’t smell as good. Fresher…he he
One helluva post, Michael M.! And of course you’re right on all counts. i’d use a dryer only in extreme emegency (not that I own one :)), air-conditioning (Klimaanlage) is installed only at work, because it can get up to 50 degrees in here with all the equipement, and I’ve only used microwave a couple of times when I really didn’t feel like cooking.
Oh, and I positively adore your bidet-expertise
I concur on all accounts from my experience in northern Spain, with the exception of the heatwave. The last week has been the coldest week in July that any locals can remember, barely hitting 18°C most days. Brrr….
The problem with A/C use in the southern US (where I’m from) is that it is almost always turned so cold that you cannot be comfortable indoors wearing the same summer clothes that you put on to be outdoors. This is the key that the Americans seem to miss. And I think they turn it the thermostat so low based on the nearly universal faulty assumption that it will cool the place faster if you turn it lower.
We have a drier that we don’t use too. Why spend all that electricity to generate all that heat and spinning if you can just hang the clothes outside for half a day? Or so goes the reasoning in my house. From what I’ve seen (2 or 3), the driers in Europe generally suck. Anyone who thinks clothes are fresher or softer from hang-drying has never touched or smelled a shirt that has come out of my grandmother’s drier in the States. One of those sheets of fabric softener in the dry cycle makes all the difference in the world.
Great post.
Being a swedish guy I don’t know what scares me the most. The obvious stupidity of our neo-liberal think-tank(a longtime enemy of mine) who earlier in history spoke out against such horrible men as Olof Palme… Or the fact that their crap gets translated and spread abroad.
Anyway, take them as seriously as you would take fox news..
And when it comes to using a dryer, it tends to destroy the print on vintage pun k t-shirts so I haven’t used it for some years now.
The average American is forced to make do with simple toilet paper to clean their perineum, whilst Slovenes can scrub themselves clean immediately after vacating their bowels
I will be honored to fund your study.
That’s a wonderful report you dug up there. Gotta love thoughts like this one: “It is better being poor in a rich country than in a poor one.” The sheer zen momentum of that one sentence alone is enough to topple a tree in a forest. With or without people being around to hear it fall.
one of the major stupidities is that in europe people actually think, that air conditioning makes the air too dry, which is not healthy (for breathing, dries the skin, etc.), blahblah… and they *don’t want* to understand an engineer’s explanation, which is that in summer the air is way to humid to be comfortable and that air conditioning dries it to a bearable humidity. indoor dry air is a problem in the winter, when everybody is heating and almost nobody is humidifying..
Well, back in my glorious country I was used to “40ºC in shadow” so these days haven’t been much of an issue, but the heat was terribly noticed… was surviving with an usb fan and another small one
But curiously got AC this very morning, so come around if in great need… although it seems weather got worse already… and in any case i prefer it to those 10 electric storms per day we used to have a pair of weeks ago.
At work it’s better, we always had the “server room” for these problems.
I invested alot of energy convincing our landlord here in Sofia to buy us a washer WITH a dryer because i hate hanging laundry… I can’t stand the way my underwear come off the line all crispy.
Agh, just get used to the heat. Already thought about power consumption all the air conditioning uses?
I (heart) this post.
When I remodeled the kitchen in my ex-flat here in Seattle, I put in a dishwasher. My Austrian husband HATED the thing and refused to use it. I could never understand why - it was clearly some cultural barrier we could not breach.
We hang the laundry now, but when the rains come back to Seattle, you bet we’ll be using the dryer again. And when I remodel the kitchen, you can bet I’ll be putting in a dishwasher.
This is a great post. These days the big kick has been about “going green”, using fewer appliances and less often. I guess I am doing a very green job by moving to Slovenia. Where’s my gold star, Al Gore?
Also, I agree with Michael N., Americans have a lot of these possesions because of credit card debt. I don’t understand why the study is measuring wealth and quality of life in terms of possessions as opposed to access to resources. If Swedish people are willing to pay for this kind of out balderdash, I have a bridge in Brooklyn they might be interested in…
Oh, and New Orleans is one of my favorite cities in the world, I didn’t know you’d lived there!
Not to defend the wrong conclusions that you mention from the Timbro study, but the ones you do not mention and that rely on the GDP are a bit harder to refute.
As far as credit card debt is concerned, the people in the USA at least have an option of personal bankruptcy, which at least people in Slovenia do not have. I don’t know about the rest of Europe.
Back to my air-conditioned room in Hotlanta. I am also running out of clean underwear ( I am sure you all wanted to know) and will be happy to do a laundry run + drying tonight. No waiting for the non-existent breeze in 80% humidity to dry my stuff. Suck it, luddites.
The sooner I talked… the sooner it happened. Nice thunderstorm we’ve got here.
Crni, personal bankruptcy in now an available option in Slovenia (of course new).
First of all, I’m sure Slovenians do not hate air conditioning. I love it. I would have died a week or two ago without one - I just wasn’t made to function at >28′C.
Yes, we do fight about having it on or off at work. Basically it’s because the units are positioned a bit awkwardly - i.e. they usually blow directly to at least one of the co-workers. Being exposed to a prolonged direct blow from an AC unit is discouraged for people, animals, or even plants (it’s in the manual 
and I believe it). (Of course it’s something different if a plain fan is blowing into your face.)
I’m sure it’ll go away eventually - with more careful internal design, as well as people getting used to the “new” reality.
Well, the reason behind the “natural ways of cooling” is simple: the so-called “normal weather”. We had it when I was little - definitely 20 years ago, and more or less 10 years ago, still. It would mean summer temperatures at 25-27′C max in this region! It would mean you could just drop the shades on your windows (even if just a little), and the house/apartment would stay pleasant during the day. Unfortunately these days seem to be over, so AC is here to stay.
As for the other appliances - if there’s a more efficient (natural?) way of doing things (and there’s time available), why use a machine.
“Namely, many Europeans just flat-out don’t like air conditioning. It’s not that it’s an unaffordable luxury or something: they just fucking hate it.”
While this is a factor, I don’t think it really explains everything. The number of air conditioning units in private homes here in Slovenia (particularly in central & southern Slovenia) as well as elsewhere in Europe has skyrocketed during the past few years.
Have attitudes really changed that much? Perhaps, but IMHO a far bigger reason is that the prices of home AC units have come down sharply, as well as the widespread availability of affordable AC-equipped cars (which prompt many people to consider getting an AC unit for their homes as well).
Bidets? Toilet Paper? Get with the future and learn how to use the three seashells instead!
@Dave: I wonder if anybody else caught the reference. Probably the best line from “Demolition Man”.
@camille: Well I was more referring to the route most Americans take toward purchasing houses. Which is basically taking out a huge loan and paying it off for the next 15-30 years. Credit card debt does play a part in other areas though, as you stated.
FWIW, I know of at least one bidet in the US, although the thing worries me…great post!
Um one question. Are the plans to move London, Oslo, Stockholm and Paris to the Iberian Peninsula in place already? Because when it’s hot, it’s much harder to move and they might want to start early.
Ah crap didn’t click through the link to see the caption
Great post! Hope you typed it on your laptop down by the river
I actually know a gay couple who own what must be the ONLY bidet in the Yakima Gulag, they are high level nomenklatura, and have a seriously nice home. Personally I don’t own such an item, most middle class or below type Americans don’t. I never even saw a bidet in my life before I knew those guys.