Greetings. If I look hot and sweaty, it is because I am hot and sweaty.

There's something called the availability cascade, which is when you're about to have a baby,

you notice other people's babies when you are about to buy a car,

look at the cars that you're interested in buying. Things that are prominent in our emotional memory highlight our attention of the moment.

Heat is prominent in my availability cascade.

It is July 4th, late afternoon, and my office has been without air conditioning for five days.

And the local electrician is on vacation.

It's 86 degrees in my office right now.

It's 93 outside.

It's been kind of miserable.

So heat and the privilege of having available air conditioning has been on my mind this weekend. So by the time this air is on Friday, hopefully

nothing will have happened in Ukraine and Russia. Until that situation

stabilizes, it is distracting me from the core work of cultural energy transition away from

the intense energy and material consumption we have today. But just think about air conditioning. Typical air conditioner

generates around 3,500 watts per hour relative to me or most of you watching this generate

around 100 watts. So that's 35 human energy potentials in an air conditioner.

Increasingly in the news, there's something called wet bulb temperature, which literally is

you put a wet cloth over a thermometer and what the temperature is then. It's a combination

of the actual temperature plus the humidity. And already today,

9% of humanity lives in areas that the wet bulb temperature is such that without air conditioning

or shade, people cannot survive for more than six hours because what ends up happening is your body,

the sweat is not able to evaporate, even if you have water and salt and such.

...