【导读】空调进入千家万户，让我们的生活舒适，却带来了对等的严重问题。如何解决这些令人又爱又痛的空调问题，是摆在我们面前的挑战，回归自然才是王道。
Air conditioning空调
No sweat 清新凉爽
Artificial cooling makes hot places bearable—but at a worryingly high cost
人工制冷让人们耐得住炎热之地，但代价高昂令人担忧
Jan 5th 2013 |?DUBAI?| from the print edition
SUMMER humidity in the Gulf often nears 90%. Winds are scant. Even in the shade the heat hovers far above the body’s natural temperature. No wonder that before 1950, fewer than 500,000 lived along the whole 500-mile southern littoral. Now, rimmed by the mirrored facades of office towers, gleaming petrochemical works, marinas, highways, bustling airports, vast shopping malls and sprawling subdivisions of sumptuous villas, it is home to 20m people. Their lives are made possible by “coolth”—artificially cooled air.
海湾地区夏季的湿度经常接近90%，很少有风。即使身处在荫凉下也是热浪滚滚，远高于正常体温。这也难怪1950年前，只有不到50万的人住在500公里的南部沿海地区。然而现在，这个地区有着摩天大楼，光芒熠熠的石化工厂，游艇码头，高速公路，熙熙攘攘的机场，诸多的大型购物中心，散布着有华丽别墅的住宅小区，它现在已经是2000万人的家了。他们的生活因“凉爽”才成为现实，即人工冷却空气。
Yet a chorus of critics counts air conditioning as more a curse than a miracle. Though food refrigeration is an unquestioned part of modern civilisation, chilling a room causes sniffiness. In his book “Losing our Cool” Stan Cox, a polemical plant scientist, blamed it for “resource waste, climate change, ozone depletion and disorientation of the human mind and body”. In 1992 Gwyn Prins, a Cambridge University professor, called “physical addiction” to cooled air America’s “most pervasive and least noticed epidemic”.
然而，空调遭到评论者们的集体声讨，他们认为空调与其说是奇迹还不如说是诅咒。尽管冰箱毫无疑问是现代文明的一部分，但是给房间降温招致鄙夷。斯坦•考克斯是位爱争论的植物科学家，他在他的书《Losing our Cool》中谴责空调浪费资源，引起气候变化，臭氧枯竭，造成人身体上和心理上的地理空间混乱。1992年身为剑桥大学教授的格温•普林斯把身体对冷空气上瘾称为美国最普遍最隐秘的传染病。
Puritans sometimes forget that air conditioning was invented with the efficiency of machines, not the comfort of people, in mind. An early success came in 1902, at a printing plant in Brooklyn, New York, where shrinkage of paper due to humidity meant that differently coloured layers of ink could not be properly aligned. By the 1920s air conditioning had spread to public spaces such as cinemas and department stores. Their trade used to slump in the heat-sodden summer. With cool air indoors, it boomed. The same technology that cools the air also cleans it: the dust-free environments for high-tech manufacturing require air conditioning.
清教徒有时会忘记，空调发明是出于机械效率考虑，而不是为了让人舒服。由于纸张受潮收缩，不同颜色的墨水层不能很好的融合。1902年，空调首次成功应用在纽约市布鲁克林的印刷工厂。直到19世纪20年代，空调进入电影院、百货公司等公共场所。在炎热的夏天，它们的生意十分萧条，装上空调后就红火起来了。空气制冷技术同样可用于净化：高科技生产需要无尘环境，空调就必不可少。
People fare better, too. A study of government typists in 1950s America found that air conditioning raised productivity by a quarter. On factory floors it cut absenteeism and stoppages. “Air-Conditioning America”, a book by Gail Cooper, cites a 1957 survey in which 90% of American firms named cooled air as the single biggest boost to their productivity. The late Nelson Polsby, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that air conditioning reshaped American politics, by enabling the migration of Republican pensioners to the Sun Belt. That helped break the long-standing Democratic lock on southern politics.
人们的日子也过得更好。在十九世纪五十年代的美国，一项针对政府打字员的研究显示，空调提高了25%的生产效率。空调还消除了工厂的缺勤和停产。盖尔•库伯所著的《空调美国》例举了一项1957年的调查，该调查显示90%的美国企业把空调作为提高生产效率唯一最有效的方法。已逝的纳尔逊•波士比是加州大学的政治社会学家，他谈到空调促使退休的共和党人移民到南方阳光地带，进而重塑了美国政治格局。这有利于打破了民主党在南方各州长期以来的政治垄断。
A mapping project devised by William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale, revealed more proof that heat wilts economies. Using a global grid system to escape the biases of national data, he identified an almost linear correlation between mean annual temperatures and productivity per head. People in the coolest climes, he found, generate 12 times the economic output of those in the hottest. Far fewer people live at those extremes than in middling climate zones, but even in the crowded temperate band of the globe, the difference in output between hotter and cooler places was big.
耶鲁大学的经济学家威廉姆•诺德豪斯制作了一幅特别的地图，更充分地证明了炎热萎靡经济。为摆脱国家数据存在的偏见，威廉姆使用全球网络系统，发现年平均温度和人均生产效率几乎线性相关。他发现，最冷地区和最热地区的产量相差11倍。虽然住在极端气候区的人远少于温和地区，但即便在拥挤的温带地区，冷热不同的区域，产量也大为不同。
Cooling also lowers mortality. In studies of what epidemiologists quaintly call a “harvesting effect”, summer heatwaves have been shown to cause sudden rises in the number of deaths from cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebrovascular disease. A 2006 survey of six South Korean cities, for instance, indicated that a rise of just 1°C over normal summer peak temperatures prompted a rise of between 6.7% and 16.3% in mortality from all causes. On the hottest days during a 2003 heatwave in Spain, according to a health-ministry survey, the increase over normal mortality rates was around a quarter.
制冷也减少了死亡。流行病学家给自己的研究起了个古朴的名字——“丰收效应”,这些研究证实酷暑使得死于心脏、呼吸和大脑相关疾病的人骤增。例如，2006年针对韩国六个城市的调查指出，在夏季最热的时候，温度只要上升一度就会引发各种病因，造成死亡率上升6.7%到16.3%。卫生部门的调查称，在西班牙最热的时候，2003年的酷暑造成死亡率上升大约25%。
Live cool and long
活得凉爽，活得长久
Studies of heatwaves in American cities during the 1980s and 1990s observed that a good predictor for falling ill was poverty, and specifically a lack of air conditioning in the home. Surveys since then suggest that the dramatic fall in the number of Americans who sicken or die during heatwaves is a direct result of widening air-conditioner ownership, from 68% of American households in 1993 to nearly 90% today. An academic paper on deaths in Chicago related to a 1999 heatwave concluded bluntly that “the strongest protective factor was a working air conditioner.”
20世纪八九十年代期间对美国城市酷暑研究观察到，一个很好的患病预测方式就是贫穷和家中空调奇缺。此后的调查显示，由于空调的普及，在热浪期间生病或死亡的人大幅减少。现在空调在美国家庭的普及率从1993年的68%上升到现在的90%。有一篇学术论文研究了1999年酷暑导致芝加哥居民死亡事件，结论坦称“最有力的保护措施就是开动空调。”
A statewide study of summer admissions to hospital in California, published in 2010, adjusted for household income, found that for each 10% increase in ownership of air conditioning there was an absolute reduction in cardiovascular disease of 0.76%, and of respiratory disease by 0.52%, for people over 65. For places less blessed than California, where risks include insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, or high levels of toxic particulate matter in the air, the benefits of wider air-conditioning use could be far greater.
对全加州夏季入院治疗病例的研究在2010年发布，并依据家庭收入进行调整。这项调查发现，对65岁以上的老人来说，空调拥有率每提高10%就会降低0.76%的心脏疾病以及0.52%的呼吸疾病。有些地方没有加州幸运，面临诸多疾病风险，包括因昆虫叮咬造成的疟疾和登革热，空气含有大量有毒微粒。提高空调普及率会是这些地方受益良多。
But what about the health of the planet? America uses more electricity for cooling than Africa uses for everything, notes Mr Cox. Hotter summers and larger homes helped American energy consumption for air conditioning to double between 1993 and 2005. Cooling buildings and vehicles pumps out almost half a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.
但地球的健康又如何呢？Mr Cox，美国制冷消耗的电量比非洲总用电量还大。夏季越来越热，家庭越来越大，美国人用于空调的能源消耗在1993年至2005年间翻了一番。建筑物和汽车制冷每年排放大约5亿吨二氧化碳。
That sounds a lot. Yet air conditioning still only accounted for 8% of household power consumption in 2005, according to the most recent comprehensive survey by America’s Energy Information Agency. That compares with 41% for heating, and 20% for making hot water, the necessity of which is seldom contested. (Significantly, overall energy use per American household has not risen in 30 years, because of things like better insulation and more efficient gadgetry.) Air conditioning is more energy-intensive than heating. But people use less of it. The shift in America’s population from northern to southern states has cut the nation’s total energy bill.
这耗电量听起来已经很多了。然而，美国能源信息局的最新综合调查显示，美国空调用电仅占2005年全年用电的8%。相形之下，供暖用电占41%，烧水占20%，这种必要性很少被提及。意味深长的是，由于隔热板更好和小机械效率更高，三十年来美国家庭平均能源消耗没有上升。空调比供暖消耗更多，但是人们使用供暖的相对较少。美国人口从北部转移到南部减少了国家总体的能源消耗。
Yet rising incomes in poor countries are associated with American-style spending on air conditioning there. Between 1995 and 2004 the proportion of homes in Chinese cities with air conditioning rose from 8% to 70%. Asia already accounts for more than half the global air-conditioning market, and China alone for 70% of production. Sales of air conditioners there, boosted by government schemes that also encourage purchase of more efficient models, have rocketed. Global warming will further stoke demand. Research in the Netherlands (see chart) by Morna Isaac and Detlef van Vuuren reckons that energy demand for air conditioning will rise forty-fold this century.
然而，贫穷国家收入不断增加也伴随着美国式空调消费的兴起。在1995年至2004年间，中国拥有空调的城市家庭比例从8%上升到70%。亚洲占据了世界空调市场的一半还多，中国单独占了生产的70%。受到中国政府鼓励购买高效家电的政策刺激，空调的规模爆发式增长。全球变暖将进一步增加空调需求。莫纳•艾萨克和德特勒夫•凡•维恩的调查估计（见上表），空调需求在本世纪将增加40倍。
Given that dirty coal-fired plants still produce some 70% of China’s current energy output, anything that stokes its electricity consumption is particularly damaging in global-warming terms. But with the use of air conditioners rising inexorably, their share in energy consumption is rising too, with the added trouble that heatwaves bring sudden spikes in use, meaning that spare capacity has to be built in to provide for summer peaks in power demand. The big blackouts over swathes of India in the summer of 2012 were widely blamed on its burgeoning middle class’s desire to keep cool. That may be unfair: though air-conditioning certainly stokes demand, political meddling in the power industry hampers its ability to keep the current flowing.
目前不清洁的火力发电厂还为中国生产大约70%的能源，任何提高中国电力消费的行为都对全球变暖损害尤其大。但是空调使用无人可挡，耗电量也水涨船高。更何况，酷暑使得空调用电高峰不时出现，必须建设额外的容量来满足夏季用电高峰。很多人认定去年夏天的印度大停电就是因为逐渐兴起的中产阶级想要降温。这样说或许不太公平，尽管空调确实增加用电需求，但是印度政府发电行业干预才导致工厂无法顺利供电。
Thankfully for lovers of coolth, air conditioning is becoming more efficient. In the past 30 years, more stringent standards for air conditioners in developed countries have more than doubled the energy efficiency of new units. For decades, air conditioning has used the same compressor technology that runs refrigerators. But Coolerado, an American company, claims to have cut energy costs by 90%, using only water as a coolant: its devices feature specially designed plastic plates that chill by evaporation. They blast half the air, sodden and warm, back outside and send the rest, cool and dry, inside. The machines can even be solar powered (though their thirsty habits may not suit all hot places).
要感谢追求清凉的人，空调的效率不断提高。过去30年间，发达国家颁布了更加严格的标准，促使新型空调能耗效率提升了两倍多。几十年来，空调使用的是冰箱的压缩技术，但是美国公司Coolerado宣称只利用水充当制冷剂能减少90%的能源成本。这种设备的特点在于专门设计的塑料盘能够利用蒸发降温。它们让一半空气迅速膨胀变热送回外界，把另一半干燥的冷空气送回内部。这些设备还能太阳能驱动（尽管这种机制可能不适合所有的炎热地区）。
Where’s my desiccant?干燥剂在哪？
Conventional air conditioning has to overcool the air in order to rid it of moisture. This dehumidifying is the most expensive part of the process. An Israeli-founded firm called Advantix is one of a number of companies using “liquid desiccant” technology: it forces air through a strong brine solution which sucks out the moisture. Advantix says its machines cut energy consumption by half. Using plentiful night-time energy to iron out daytime peaks can work, too. A Californian company has a product called Icebear that makes and stores ice cheaply at night to cool buildings during the day.
传统的空调为了避免潮湿会制冷过度，这种除湿方式是制冷过程中耗费最大的。以色列公司Advantix同许多公司一样，使用液体干燥剂技术。这项技术使空气通过浓度很高的盐溶液进行干燥。 Advantix称，他们的机器能耗减半。使用大量夜间能源解决白天用电高峰是可行的。一家加州公司的产品叫做Icebear，能够在夜间廉价制作储存冰，用于白天给建筑降温。
Such changes are even more beneficial if they avoid using refrigerant chemicals such as freon. These air-conditioning coolants leak into the atmosphere and are among the more potent greenhouse gases. Even less polluting coolants that have widely replaced earlier kinds produce warming effects that are 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide’s. International protocols have only slowly phased out the worst, ozone-eating gases. But in the meantime, much slow-to-replace old equipment in rich countries, as well as factory-fresh units in poor ones, still rely on older pollutants which are, to boot, still smuggled in large quantities to countries where they are meant to be banned.
如果他们能够放弃使用冰箱化学物氟利昂，这些进展会更加有益。这些空调制冷剂泄漏到大气，是更高效的温室气体。污染相对较小的制冷剂已经大面积代替了先前的产品，即使是它们也要比二氧化碳的温室作用强2000倍。国际议定书只是缓慢地逐步淘汰最耗臭氧的气体。但同时，发达国家的许多老式设备和贫穷国家刚出厂的设备更新换代慢，全都依赖老式污染物，它们还被大量走私到禁止使用的国家。
What may be harder to mitigate are the subtler negative impacts that air conditioning has had on the environments where people live and work. Since the 1940s, climate control has prompted architects to lower ceilings and scrap such pleasant features as balconies and porches, which leak costly cooled air into the outside world. Instead of being spaced to allow air to circulate, or being built around courtyards, buildings have tended to be boxlike and tightly packed together. That can create “heat canyons” where each building’s air-conditioning unit runs at full throttle in a futile race against its neighbours. In the sprawling conurbations of the American South, as in the Gulf and cities such as Singapore, people seeking company find fewer free communal open spaces, and are herded instead into commercialised indoor venues such as shopping malls.
更加难以缓解的是空调更加微妙的消极影响：它就在人们工作生活的地方。20世纪40年代以来，气候控制促使建筑物降低天花板，停用阳台和门廊等设施，冷空气就是从这里白白流走的。建筑物不留空气流通空间或者建在庭院，它更像盒子堆叠在一起。这样就形成了“热量谷”，建筑里每个空调都开足功率，与邻居徒劳地比赛。在美国不断延伸的南方大都市以及海湾地区和新加坡等城市，人们越来越难找到免费的公共露天场地，都要钻进像购物大楼这些商业室内场所。
Fan dances
降温总动员
Perhaps the most ambitious response to such problems comes from Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think-tank that promotes energy efficiency. He argues that a combination of thoughtful design and new technology can minimise or even eliminate the need for air conditioning. His approach starts with architecture: avoiding dark-coloured external surfaces, using trees and other shade providers, and installing proper insulation and modern windows that let in light but reflect heat. These may be expensive to install, but hugely cut the need for cooler air—and hence the cost of providing it.
或许解决对此类问题，最有魄力的是来自洛基山研究所的艾默里• 洛文斯，这个机构致力于提高能源效率的智库。他认为周全入微的设计加上新技术能最小化甚至消除空调需求。他从建筑学入手：避免使用深色表皮，利用树木等遮阳，安装合适的导体和现代窗户，透光不透热。安装这些东西价格不菲，但这样就减少冷空气的需要和运营成本。
Nor is air conditioning the only way to lower the temperature indoors. Spraying water on a roof provides natural chill through evaporation, as do draught towers. “Many civilisations mastered these arts millennia ago,” Mr Lovins notes. A profusion of indoor plants help cool a room, as do cleverly designed floors that conduct heat into the ground. Modern fans and mesh chairs can reduce the sensation of uncomfortable heat: the aim, after all, is to cool people, not buildings. For all that, the millions who have experienced the invigorating blast of cold, dry air on a hot muggy day will be loth to abandon it.
空调不是降低室温的唯一方法。洛文斯说人们可以采用通风塔原理，在屋顶洒水，利用蒸发自然降温。许多文明在一千年前就掌握了这些艺术。丰富的室内植物也有助于降温，精心设计的楼层会把热量导入大地。现代风扇和网格椅，减少了令人不悦的热量的敏感度，重要的是让人凉爽而不是建筑。尽管如此，数百万人在闷热天气里享受过大量干燥的冷风后，都会不愿意抛弃干燥的冷风。
Air conditioning空调
No sweat 清新凉爽
Artificial cooling makes hot places bearable—but at a worryingly high cost
人工制冷让人们耐得住炎热之地，但代价高昂令人担忧
Jan 5th 2013 |?DUBAI?| from the print edition
SUMMER humidity in the Gulf often nears 90%. Winds are scant. Even in the shade the heat hovers far above the body’s natural temperature. No wonder that before 1950, fewer than 500,000 lived along the whole 500-mile southern littoral. Now, rimmed by the mirrored facades of office towers, gleaming petrochemical works, marinas, highways, bustling airports, vast shopping malls and sprawling subdivisions of sumptuous villas, it is home to 20m people. Their lives are made possible by “coolth”—artificially cooled air.
海湾地区夏季的湿度经常接近90%，很少有风。即使身处在荫凉下也是热浪滚滚，远高于正常体温。这也难怪1950年前，只有不到50万的人住在500公里的南部沿海地区。然而现在，这个地区有着摩天大楼，光芒熠熠的石化工厂，游艇码头，高速公路，熙熙攘攘的机场，诸多的大型购物中心，散布着有华丽别墅的住宅小区，它现在已经是2000万人的家了。他们的生活因“凉爽”才成为现实，即人工冷却空气。
Yet a chorus of critics counts air conditioning as more a curse than a miracle. Though food refrigeration is an unquestioned part of modern civilisation, chilling a room causes sniffiness. In his book “Losing our Cool” Stan Cox, a polemical plant scientist, blamed it for “resource waste, climate change, ozone depletion and disorientation of the human mind and body”. In 1992 Gwyn Prins, a Cambridge University professor, called “physical addiction” to cooled air America’s “most pervasive and least noticed epidemic”.
然而，空调遭到评论者们的集体声讨，他们认为空调与其说是奇迹还不如说是诅咒。尽管冰箱毫无疑问是现代文明的一部分，但是给房间降温招致鄙夷。斯坦•考克斯是位爱争论的植物科学家，他在他的书《Losing our Cool》中谴责空调浪费资源，引起气候变化，臭氧枯竭，造成人身体上和心理上的地理空间混乱。1992年身为剑桥大学教授的格温•普林斯把身体对冷空气上瘾称为美国最普遍最隐秘的传染病。
Puritans sometimes forget that air conditioning was invented with the efficiency of machines, not the comfort of people, in mind. An early success came in 1902, at a printing plant in Brooklyn, New York, where shrinkage of paper due to humidity meant that differently coloured layers of ink could not be properly aligned. By the 1920s air conditioning had spread to public spaces such as cinemas and department stores. Their trade used to slump in the heat-sodden summer. With cool air indoors, it boomed. The same technology that cools the air also cleans it: the dust-free environments for high-tech manufacturing require air conditioning.
清教徒有时会忘记，空调发明是出于机械效率考虑，而不是为了让人舒服。由于纸张受潮收缩，不同颜色的墨水层不能很好的融合。1902年，空调首次成功应用在纽约市布鲁克林的印刷工厂。直到19世纪20年代，空调进入电影院、百货公司等公共场所。在炎热的夏天，它们的生意十分萧条，装上空调后就红火起来了。空气制冷技术同样可用于净化：高科技生产需要无尘环境，空调就必不可少。
People fare better, too. A study of government typists in 1950s America found that air conditioning raised productivity by a quarter. On factory floors it cut absenteeism and stoppages. “Air-Conditioning America”, a book by Gail Cooper, cites a 1957 survey in which 90% of American firms named cooled air as the single biggest boost to their productivity. The late Nelson Polsby, a political scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, suggested that air conditioning reshaped American politics, by enabling the migration of Republican pensioners to the Sun Belt. That helped break the long-standing Democratic lock on southern politics.
人们的日子也过得更好。在十九世纪五十年代的美国，一项针对政府打字员的研究显示，空调提高了25%的生产效率。空调还消除了工厂的缺勤和停产。盖尔•库伯所著的《空调美国》例举了一项1957年的调查，该调查显示90%的美国企业把空调作为提高生产效率唯一最有效的方法。已逝的纳尔逊•波士比是加州大学的政治社会学家，他谈到空调促使退休的共和党人移民到南方阳光地带，进而重塑了美国政治格局。这有利于打破了民主党在南方各州长期以来的政治垄断。
A mapping project devised by William Nordhaus, an economist at Yale, revealed more proof that heat wilts economies. Using a global grid system to escape the biases of national data, he identified an almost linear correlation between mean annual temperatures and productivity per head. People in the coolest climes, he found, generate 12 times the economic output of those in the hottest. Far fewer people live at those extremes than in middling climate zones, but even in the crowded temperate band of the globe, the difference in output between hotter and cooler places was big.
耶鲁大学的经济学家威廉姆•诺德豪斯制作了一幅特别的地图，更充分地证明了炎热萎靡经济。为摆脱国家数据存在的偏见，威廉姆使用全球网络系统，发现年平均温度和人均生产效率几乎线性相关。他发现，最冷地区和最热地区的产量相差11倍。虽然住在极端气候区的人远少于温和地区，但即便在拥挤的温带地区，冷热不同的区域，产量也大为不同。
Cooling also lowers mortality. In studies of what epidemiologists quaintly call a “harvesting effect”, summer heatwaves have been shown to cause sudden rises in the number of deaths from cardiovascular, respiratory and cerebrovascular disease. A 2006 survey of six South Korean cities, for instance, indicated that a rise of just 1°C over normal summer peak temperatures prompted a rise of between 6.7% and 16.3% in mortality from all causes. On the hottest days during a 2003 heatwave in Spain, according to a health-ministry survey, the increase over normal mortality rates was around a quarter.
制冷也减少了死亡。流行病学家给自己的研究起了个古朴的名字——“丰收效应”,这些研究证实酷暑使得死于心脏、呼吸和大脑相关疾病的人骤增。例如，2006年针对韩国六个城市的调查指出，在夏季最热的时候，温度只要上升一度就会引发各种病因，造成死亡率上升6.7%到16.3%。卫生部门的调查称，在西班牙最热的时候，2003年的酷暑造成死亡率上升大约25%。
Live cool and long
活得凉爽，活得长久
Studies of heatwaves in American cities during the 1980s and 1990s observed that a good predictor for falling ill was poverty, and specifically a lack of air conditioning in the home. Surveys since then suggest that the dramatic fall in the number of Americans who sicken or die during heatwaves is a direct result of widening air-conditioner ownership, from 68% of American households in 1993 to nearly 90% today. An academic paper on deaths in Chicago related to a 1999 heatwave concluded bluntly that “the strongest protective factor was a working air conditioner.”
20世纪八九十年代期间对美国城市酷暑研究观察到，一个很好的患病预测方式就是贫穷和家中空调奇缺。此后的调查显示，由于空调的普及，在热浪期间生病或死亡的人大幅减少。现在空调在美国家庭的普及率从1993年的68%上升到现在的90%。有一篇学术论文研究了1999年酷暑导致芝加哥居民死亡事件，结论坦称“最有力的保护措施就是开动空调。”
A statewide study of summer admissions to hospital in California, published in 2010, adjusted for household income, found that for each 10% increase in ownership of air conditioning there was an absolute reduction in cardiovascular disease of 0.76%, and of respiratory disease by 0.52%, for people over 65. For places less blessed than California, where risks include insect-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue fever, or high levels of toxic particulate matter in the air, the benefits of wider air-conditioning use could be far greater.
对全加州夏季入院治疗病例的研究在2010年发布，并依据家庭收入进行调整。这项调查发现，对65岁以上的老人来说，空调拥有率每提高10%就会降低0.76%的心脏疾病以及0.52%的呼吸疾病。有些地方没有加州幸运，面临诸多疾病风险，包括因昆虫叮咬造成的疟疾和登革热，空气含有大量有毒微粒。提高空调普及率会是这些地方受益良多。
But what about the health of the planet? America uses more electricity for cooling than Africa uses for everything, notes Mr Cox. Hotter summers and larger homes helped American energy consumption for air conditioning to double between 1993 and 2005. Cooling buildings and vehicles pumps out almost half a billion tonnes of carbon dioxide annually.
但地球的健康又如何呢？Mr Cox，美国制冷消耗的电量比非洲总用电量还大。夏季越来越热，家庭越来越大，美国人用于空调的能源消耗在1993年至2005年间翻了一番。建筑物和汽车制冷每年排放大约5亿吨二氧化碳。
That sounds a lot. Yet air conditioning still only accounted for 8% of household power consumption in 2005, according to the most recent comprehensive survey by America’s Energy Information Agency. That compares with 41% for heating, and 20% for making hot water, the necessity of which is seldom contested. (Significantly, overall energy use per American household has not risen in 30 years, because of things like better insulation and more efficient gadgetry.) Air conditioning is more energy-intensive than heating. But people use less of it. The shift in America’s population from northern to southern states has cut the nation’s total energy bill.
这耗电量听起来已经很多了。然而，美国能源信息局的最新综合调查显示，美国空调用电仅占2005年全年用电的8%。相形之下，供暖用电占41%，烧水占20%，这种必要性很少被提及。意味深长的是，由于隔热板更好和小机械效率更高，三十年来美国家庭平均能源消耗没有上升。空调比供暖消耗更多，但是人们使用供暖的相对较少。美国人口从北部转移到南部减少了国家总体的能源消耗。
Yet rising incomes in poor countries are associated with American-style spending on air conditioning there. Between 1995 and 2004 the proportion of homes in Chinese cities with air conditioning rose from 8% to 70%. Asia already accounts for more than half the global air-conditioning market, and China alone for 70% of production. Sales of air conditioners there, boosted by government schemes that also encourage purchase of more efficient models, have rocketed. Global warming will further stoke demand. Research in the Netherlands (see chart) by Morna Isaac and Detlef van Vuuren reckons that energy demand for air conditioning will rise forty-fold this century.
然而，贫穷国家收入不断增加也伴随着美国式空调消费的兴起。在1995年至2004年间，中国拥有空调的城市家庭比例从8%上升到70%。亚洲占据了世界空调市场的一半还多，中国单独占了生产的70%。受到中国政府鼓励购买高效家电的政策刺激，空调的规模爆发式增长。全球变暖将进一步增加空调需求。莫纳•艾萨克和德特勒夫•凡•维恩的调查估计（见上表），空调需求在本世纪将增加40倍。
Given that dirty coal-fired plants still produce some 70% of China’s current energy output, anything that stokes its electricity consumption is particularly damaging in global-warming terms. But with the use of air conditioners rising inexorably, their share in energy consumption is rising too, with the added trouble that heatwaves bring sudden spikes in use, meaning that spare capacity has to be built in to provide for summer peaks in power demand. The big blackouts over swathes of India in the summer of 2012 were widely blamed on its burgeoning middle class’s desire to keep cool. That may be unfair: though air-conditioning certainly stokes demand, political meddling in the power industry hampers its ability to keep the current flowing.
目前不清洁的火力发电厂还为中国生产大约70%的能源，任何提高中国电力消费的行为都对全球变暖损害尤其大。但是空调使用无人可挡，耗电量也水涨船高。更何况，酷暑使得空调用电高峰不时出现，必须建设额外的容量来满足夏季用电高峰。很多人认定去年夏天的印度大停电就是因为逐渐兴起的中产阶级想要降温。这样说或许不太公平，尽管空调确实增加用电需求，但是印度政府发电行业干预才导致工厂无法顺利供电。
Thankfully for lovers of coolth, air conditioning is becoming more efficient. In the past 30 years, more stringent standards for air conditioners in developed countries have more than doubled the energy efficiency of new units. For decades, air conditioning has used the same compressor technology that runs refrigerators. But Coolerado, an American company, claims to have cut energy costs by 90%, using only water as a coolant: its devices feature specially designed plastic plates that chill by evaporation. They blast half the air, sodden and warm, back outside and send the rest, cool and dry, inside. The machines can even be solar powered (though their thirsty habits may not suit all hot places).
要感谢追求清凉的人，空调的效率不断提高。过去30年间，发达国家颁布了更加严格的标准，促使新型空调能耗效率提升了两倍多。几十年来，空调使用的是冰箱的压缩技术，但是美国公司Coolerado宣称只利用水充当制冷剂能减少90%的能源成本。这种设备的特点在于专门设计的塑料盘能够利用蒸发降温。它们让一半空气迅速膨胀变热送回外界，把另一半干燥的冷空气送回内部。这些设备还能太阳能驱动（尽管这种机制可能不适合所有的炎热地区）。
Where’s my desiccant?干燥剂在哪？Conventional air conditioning has to overcool the air in order to rid it of moisture. This dehumidifying is the most expensive part of the process. An Israeli-founded firm called Advantix is one of a number of companies using “liquid desiccant” technology: it forces air through a strong brine solution which sucks out the moisture. Advantix says its machines cut energy consumption by half. Using plentiful night-time energy to iron out daytime peaks can work, too. A Californian company has a product called Icebear that makes and stores ice cheaply at night to cool buildings during the day.
传统的空调为了避免潮湿会制冷过度，这种除湿方式是制冷过程中耗费最大的。以色列公司Advantix同许多公司一样，使用液体干燥剂技术。这项技术使空气通过浓度很高的盐溶液进行干燥。 Advantix称，他们的机器能耗减半。使用大量夜间能源解决白天用电高峰是可行的。一家加州公司的产品叫做Icebear，能够在夜间廉价制作储存冰，用于白天给建筑降温。
Such changes are even more beneficial if they avoid using refrigerant chemicals such as freon. These air-conditioning coolants leak into the atmosphere and are among the more potent greenhouse gases. Even less polluting coolants that have widely replaced earlier kinds produce warming effects that are 2,000 times more powerful than carbon dioxide’s. International protocols have only slowly phased out the worst, ozone-eating gases. But in the meantime, much slow-to-replace old equipment in rich countries, as well as factory-fresh units in poor ones, still rely on older pollutants which are, to boot, still smuggled in large quantities to countries where they are meant to be banned.
如果他们能够放弃使用冰箱化学物氟利昂，这些进展会更加有益。这些空调制冷剂泄漏到大气，是更高效的温室气体。污染相对较小的制冷剂已经大面积代替了先前的产品，即使是它们也要比二氧化碳的温室作用强2000倍。国际议定书只是缓慢地逐步淘汰最耗臭氧的气体。但同时，发达国家的许多老式设备和贫穷国家刚出厂的设备更新换代慢，全都依赖老式污染物，它们还被大量走私到禁止使用的国家。
What may be harder to mitigate are the subtler negative impacts that air conditioning has had on the environments where people live and work. Since the 1940s, climate control has prompted architects to lower ceilings and scrap such pleasant features as balconies and porches, which leak costly cooled air into the outside world. Instead of being spaced to allow air to circulate, or being built around courtyards, buildings have tended to be boxlike and tightly packed together. That can create “heat canyons” where each building’s air-conditioning unit runs at full throttle in a futile race against its neighbours. In the sprawling conurbations of the American South, as in the Gulf and cities such as Singapore, people seeking company find fewer free communal open spaces, and are herded instead into commercialised indoor venues such as shopping malls.
更加难以缓解的是空调更加微妙的消极影响：它就在人们工作生活的地方。20世纪40年代以来，气候控制促使建筑物降低天花板，停用阳台和门廊等设施，冷空气就是从这里白白流走的。建筑物不留空气流通空间或者建在庭院，它更像盒子堆叠在一起。这样就形成了“热量谷”，建筑里每个空调都开足功率，与邻居徒劳地比赛。在美国不断延伸的南方大都市以及海湾地区和新加坡等城市，人们越来越难找到免费的公共露天场地，都要钻进像购物大楼这些商业室内场所。
Fan dances
降温总动员
Perhaps the most ambitious response to such problems comes from Amory Lovins, of the Rocky Mountain Institute, a think-tank that promotes energy efficiency. He argues that a combination of thoughtful design and new technology can minimise or even eliminate the need for air conditioning. His approach starts with architecture: avoiding dark-coloured external surfaces, using trees and other shade providers, and installing proper insulation and modern windows that let in light but reflect heat. These may be expensive to install, but hugely cut the need for cooler air—and hence the cost of providing it.
或许解决对此类问题，最有魄力的是来自洛基山研究所的艾默里• 洛文斯，这个机构致力于提高能源效率的智库。他认为周全入微的设计加上新技术能最小化甚至消除空调需求。他从建筑学入手：避免使用深色表皮，利用树木等遮阳，安装合适的导体和现代窗户，透光不透热。安装这些东西价格不菲，但这样就减少冷空气的需要和运营成本。
Nor is air conditioning the only way to lower the temperature indoors. Spraying water on a roof provides natural chill through evaporation, as do draught towers. “Many civilisations mastered these arts millennia ago,” Mr Lovins notes. A profusion of indoor plants help cool a room, as do cleverly designed floors that conduct heat into the ground. Modern fans and mesh chairs can reduce the sensation of uncomfortable heat: the aim, after all, is to cool people, not buildings. For all that, the millions who have experienced the invigorating blast of cold, dry air on a hot muggy day will be loth to abandon it.
空调不是降低室温的唯一方法。洛文斯说人们可以采用通风塔原理，在屋顶洒水，利用蒸发自然降温。许多文明在一千年前就掌握了这些艺术。丰富的室内植物也有助于降温，精心设计的楼层会把热量导入大地。现代风扇和网格椅，减少了令人不悦的热量的敏感度，重要的是让人凉爽而不是建筑。尽管如此，数百万人在闷热天气里享受过大量干燥的冷风后，都会不愿意抛弃干燥的冷风。
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