12 WEEKLYPRESS.COM · UCREVIEW.COM · JULY 18 · 2012


Te heat’s back on in the mid-Atlantic, but will the power, and the cooling systems we’ve grown to depend on, stay on? Midsummer outages bring home a harsh awareness, Liza Field reminds us. Not only is our power grid vulnerable to a changing climate, but so are our homes, made oven-like by a reliance on electric power. She suggests an old American solution.


Made in the Shade By Liza Field


How’s your cooling system this summer?


“Down,” said a lot of hot people in early


July, when extreme high temperatures kicked fierce storms up — and a swath of the power grid down — across the mid- Atlantic. We Americans, who live mainly indoors


now, emerged from buildings like bugs pouring out of boxes. Neighbors greeted neighbors they’d never met. People looked at the sky, hoping for clouds, and toted chairs around the landscape, looking for shade.


It was like the old days — almost! As in earlier centuries, many windows (long shut) were opened to the summertime air. But newer buildings, designed on the groundless premise of unceasing electric power, offered only plate glass windows never meant to open, and quickly became heat traps.


Even many windows that did open were


met by relentless heat from sun-baked land- scapes of lawn and unshaded asphalt. So offices, retail stores and churches closed; apartments, houses and trailer courts emptied — everyone looking for a livable refuge from the greenhouse effect of these sun-broiled boxes. Temporary shelters opened and a state


of emergency was declared — not because a disaster had destroyed homes, but because the contemporary American home itself, unplugged from the power grid, now con- stitutes a disaster. Who can live in a broiling greenhouse, many people wondered for the first time, walking outside in a daze?


Old Coolers Our forebears, just 100 years ago, would have marveled over this 21st-century crisis. While many had electricity, even some window fans, a power outage would hardly have put them out of their homes. For one thing, many were frequently


“out” already. Far more American life took place outdoors, between the ground, water and sky.


“Air conditioning” consisted of cold


creeks, rivers and springhouses, an evening porch, open windows, and nature’s oldest cooling unit. “When Americans got air condition- ing, they cut down their trees and moved indoors,” observed Betty Besal, city arbor- ist for Lexington, Va. She’d noticed this enormous cultural change over a few brief decades.


The United States has become one vast


landscape of giant walk-in coolers (the buildings in which we now spend more than 90 percent of our lives). Residential trees have become “unnecessary.” They’re obstacles in the lawnmower’s way; they drop messy fruit and leaves on the perfect lawn, might fall, might buckle the driveway asphalt, might get “too big.” We find so many reasons, ridiculous or expedient, to cut down residential trees, why keep any standing?


Another Shelter The only people I know who didn’t


suffer from the July power outages lived among trees. Many had never had air condi- tioning and were amazed that anyone’s lack of it constituted a federal emergency. Personally, I’d seen how a building could become an oven.


When I moved into my little ranch house 18 years ago, only two trees grew in the broad lawn. The sun-beaten house roasted like a brick oven, storing up heat to radiate long into the night. The previous owner had installed a heat pump, whose cooling mechanism appar- ently allowed her to survive without shade. I used it greedily, indifferent to the power- bill spike, but began planting trees. Today, a shady woodland has grown up and the summer power bill has plummeted. These trees are now my only “AC,” shad- ing the yard, the street, the house walls and much of the roof.


Branching Out Community forest programs raise this kind of cooling effect over entire cities. Ac- cording to The City of Pittsburgh Shade Tree Commission, “20,000 new trees = $800,000 worth of utility savings to our re- gion annually.” Why? Tree-shade keeps asphalt from absorbing and radiating heat. Trees also help stir up much-needed summer rains. They then absorb storm- water, helping to recharge the local aquifer. Later, they slow evaporation with two wa- ter “lids”: their shade and the humus they drop as needles or leaf debris. All of this helps because groundwater keeps local springs, creeks and rivers flow- ing during dry spells. These waters, in summer, provide nature’s coolant to their region, modifying the larger climate. Currently, we assume we can escape that


larger climate and live indefinitely within artificial, indoor climates, but the inside and outside of our walls are not as separate as we think.


Air conditioning’s massive draw on the U.S. power grid requires expensive reserve operations to meet each summer’s peak de- mand. That costly reserve operation drives up everyone’s electricity rate.


It also accelerates global warming, as the planet’s fossil fuels go up in smoke, for “air conditioning.” In essence, we’re burning the planet to stay cool.


How long can that insanity last? Not as


long, perhaps, as a shade tree and its older form of climate control.


Liza Field teaches English and philosophy in the Virginia Gover- nor’s School and Wytheville Com- munity College. This column is distributed by Bay Journal News Service


HELP WANTED


Looking for a Full Time Sales Associate to sell ad space for the UC Review and Weekly Press (print and online).


Newspaper/media (advertising) sales experience preferred. Time management skills, focus and motivation, integrity, good people skills, team player required.


Outside sales, phone and email contacts. Excellent commission and bonuses.


Please email resume to Bob Christian editor@pressreview.net or fax to 215-222-2378


UNIVERSITY CITY www.ucreview.com


WEEKLY PRESS www.weeklypress.com


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16