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Air conditioning

uchimizu event

How Japan keeps its cool when temps are high

Energy

At a recent uchimizu event at the Higo-Hosokawa Garden, participants in lightweight kimonos used wooden ladles to spray water in long arcs that caught the late-afternoon light.

Firefighters blast water in Berlin in mid-August, providing relief from the heat. This is among the few ways to cool off in a city with little air conditioning.

It’s so hot in Berlin that people are cooling down in an old WWII bunker

Air conditioners being loaded onto a truck for delivery. Most of the world's AC units cool air with chemicals that are big contributors to global warming. A new agreement forged in Kigali, Rwanda, will phase those coolants out over then next 30 years.

Keeping our planet cooler just got a little easier

Environment
Ronald Reagan and his wife, Nancy, wave to crowds from their limousine during Reagan's first inauguration parade in 1981.

How air conditioning got Ronald Reagan elected president

Books

Turn off your air conditioner

Business, Economics and Jobs
The World

Beating the Heat

Commentator Julia King laments that with the use of air conditioning in the home, her neighbors in Goshen, Indiana no longer sit out on the front porch or engage in other traditional summer cool-off escapes.

Freon Free in 1996

As of January 1, 1996 car manufacturers in the United States will start selling autos with air conditioning that is CFC(chlorofluorocarbon)-free. Some consumers are confused about what that means and how it may impact them. In this consumer information segment, Steve Curwood talks with Drusilla Hufford of the Environmental Protection Agency on what consumers need […]