COMMENTARY: How America’s love of air conditioning became a hot topic

Few things in life, besides a glass of water when you are crossing the desert, offer as much immediate relief as air conditioning. You’re boiling outside, you pull open a door, you step into a paradise of 68-degree air, and your body all but screams “Hallelujah!” In years past, businesses used to boast that their confines were chilled. Movie marquees used to promote “manufactured weather!” Roadside motels would flash “A.C.” in neon. Restaurants, banks, department stores, all happily bragged that they were cool — in the literal sense of the word. It was like the flip side on that old Christmas song. Baby, it’s cold inside. But these days, cold air has become a hot topic. As heat waves swelter much of the world, particularly Europe, “air conditioning” is now, as cowboys used to say, fightin’