Air-conditioning Addiction

“ Hot in the city: Energy crisis tests Singapore's air-con addiction ”

“In 1999, Lee Kuan Yew, widely seen as the founding father of modern Singapore, famously credited air-conditioning with having "changed the lives of people in tropical regions" by enabling work indoors despite the heat outside.”

Lee Kwan Yew was in power while I worked in Singapore in 1982. I taught three three-hour classes each weekday and two classes on Saturdays. I walked into a small classroom (about twenty students), the door wide open and the air-conditioners full on.

Back in 1982 Singapore was in the business of heating up the city. The window-mounted air-conditioners were in the business of moving heat FROM the outside air and pumping in right back INTO the outside air. In the process they converted electrical energy into heat energy, right there inside the room. Several air-conditioners in each room could not beat the heat and humidity that is the birthright of the island.

This upset me, such a violation of logic, that one afternoon I turned the room’s air-conditioners OFF and closed the door; probably came close to killing the students. The students must have been shocked at my violation of their benevolent dictator’s laws. I grew up in the desert of Western Australian goldfields, with no air-conditioning and no breeze, except a thunderstorm once a month.

Now I read that Singapore is panicking over its use and abuse of imported petroleum products which has been going on for at least forty, possibly fifty years. Hah hah!

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