Learning to live in the world as it is

It’s not a cultural difference

In the early 2000s, I worked in the communications office of a large, private university in the southeastern United States. (Identifying details kept deliberately vague to protect the innocent.)

Our suite was in the renovated basement of a multi-story building that also housed the administration of the affiliated hospital and health sciences center. As was typical for office buildings constructed in the 1970s and ’80s, it was almost hermetically sealed against the outside world. Floor-to-ceiling glass windows that admitted light and heat, but that did not open. A large HVAC system providing an entirely artificial climate.

The executives on the top floor wore typical American corporate business attire – suits, jackets and ties for the men; long-sleeved blouses and skirts with heels and stockings for women.

In order for this dress code to be genteely maintained year round, the thermostat for the entire building was set to a cool 62 degrees Fahrenheit in the sweltering Georgia summers. But, keeping the top floor at 62 meant making our rooms colder. Much colder.

I remember wearing fingerless gloves inside the office in June to keep my hands warm as I typed. My officemate kept a space heater under her desk. I took periodic breaks to go stand on the loading dock and warm up, since outdoors in the real world it was 85F+.

I remember thinking, even then, how positively absurd and extravagant it was to keep such a huge space artificially cold in the middle of summer.

I think about this when I hear people say that Europe needs to get air conditioning “like they have in America.”

And, yes, I promise, this is the last post I will write on ‘The Debate’ about Europeans’ supposed cultural aversion to using A/C.

But as much as Europe is realizing that its built environment was designed for a world that no longer exists, as I writer I know put it, America needs to wake up to its own uncomfortable truth.

American ‘culture’ is built around cheap energy

And that energy is getting expensive.

It never was cheap for most of the world. And, for a growing number of Americans, it isn’t now, and is only going to become less so.

As more and more demands are placed on aging power grid infrastructure in the U.S., higher costs for electricity are going to mean more Americans need to make some hard choices about what amount of A/C they can afford.

And, whether we want it to be truly available to everyone (even most of us!) or whether it will become (like housing and healthcare) a luxury to be enjoyed and squandered by the wealthy at the expense of the vulnerable.

Instead of simply exhorting the rest of the world to get on board with the American way of space cooling, we really should be looking to Europe and other regions for clues to adapting our habits to the world that we are in, instead of remaining stubbornly attached to the artificial world that we created, but can’t sustain.

READ: Extreme heat wave threatens U.S. power grids and July 4 travel. by Sam Meredith. July 3, 2026. CNBC.

READ: Stretched to the limit’: Heat wave prompts US electrical grid emergency. by Bill Hutchinson. ABC News. July 2, 2026.

READ: When heat waves cripple energy systems. by Natalie Muller. July 6, 2026. Deutsche Welle.

Example 2: The price of gasoline

As I write this post, the average price for gasoline across Germany is €2,05 ($2.28) per liter. One liter is a little over a quarter of a gallon. Buying a single gallon of Super E10 – Germany#s standard unleaded gasoline – would cost just over €9 (that’s $10.28).

This is actually down from the record high prices experienced just after Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting oil shipments and the global supply chain.

In April, prices per liter rose above €2,43 for the first time. Prior to the war in Iran, prices for gasoline hovered just below €2 per liter. According to a report from DW, even the oil supply shocks of the 1970s hadn’t pushed prices above the equivalent of the €2.

I doubt anywhere in the United States has seen gas prices of more than 10 dollars per gallon. Historically, gas has been much cheaper there due to a variety of factors. (Short version: The U.S. has a domestic oil supply and doesn’t need to import as much energy. Also, Germany heavily taxes fuel to encourage conservation.)

If you listen to pundits and conventional American wisdom, the preference Americans have for driving and driving larger automobiles, SUVs and trucks is another cultural difference.

And, it is, but it is primarily shaped by the environmental, economic and policy choices made by leaders in the two countries over several previous decades.

Gasoline is expensive, so you don’t drive everywhere, unless you are rich and don’t mind setting money on fire. If you drive, you want to drive the vehcile that uses fuel the most efficiently.

It is not just down to individual preference.

Reality bites

As the United States steps back (to put it mildly) from its role as the world superpower/global hegemon, many Americans will find that they no longer enjoy the same privileges they are used to.

Global supply disruptions, tariffs, higher fuel costs, a weakening U.S. dollar, government budget cuts. These are all dismantling the insular and privileged “culture” many Americans have grown up in and have come to expect as their individual birthright.

How else would there be so many Americans, so confident that – of course – the lifestyles they have come to enjoy are examples of progress and modernity and unquestionably aspirational for the rest of the world.

As I writer that I admire recently wrote, Americans will soon have to learn to live in the world as it exists, and it is not the one they believed they were in.