> ... other effects of air-conditioning are more insidious: ‘The world before Freon was a world in which the people of the planet understood how to handle the heat—not just personally but as a community. If you were rich, the way to deal with the hottest months of the summer was easy: slow down and migrate to your summer home in the Hamptons or your vacation estate in the mountains… But even lower-income urbanites through the 1901 New York heat wave made it through without leaving, if only because they had no other choice. They slept on roofs or fire escapes or in the parks under the stars. They modified their work habits. They wore considerably less clothing. They opened fire hydrants. Some even stood under streetlamp-sized showerheads connected to the city’s water supply, once provided by the municipal government but now long gone.

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