From the New York Times, I'm Michael Bobaro.

This is the Daily.

Today, the story of how air conditioning has become both our answer to a warming

planet and a major obstacle to actually confronting.

My colleague Emily Badger on the increasingly dangerous paradox

of trying to control the temperature.

It's Friday.

It's Friday,

Friday, August 16th.

Emily, I want to start with a very personal question for you.

What is your relationship to air conditioning?

So at this exact moment I am sitting in no air conditioning and it is kind of uncomfortable and I've turned it off because it's loud and it's not very conducive to recording a podcast.

I didn't mean right now I meant in the larger arc of your life but thank you for turning it off for

the purpose of this episode.

Yeah so I grew up in Chicago in this brick three flat apartment building this very classic Chicago architecture

you know built in the early 1900s and it didn't have air conditioning so I didn't

have air conditioning growing up. Hardly anybody I knew had air conditioning growing up.

Hardly anybody I knew had air conditioning growing up

because we all lived in buildings like this.

Not even window units, just didn't happen.

Nope.

We didn't even have a window unit in my family.

...