We are in Switzerland and it’s reasonable hot. The high today is 93 degrees Fahrenheit. When we are inside there is air conditioning, but compared to the United States it is much warmer inside. Best guess is the air tends to be set between 76 and 78 degrees whereas in the States most places are set closer to 70 degrees.

I much prefer this and it seems to me that this must save a lot of energy which also seams like a good thing. Jamie on the other hand is very hot. He would pay someone a decent chunk of money to be in a room that was cooled to 70 degrees.

In the United States I am frequently cold when inside an air conditioned space unless I am active. Unsurprisingly, Jamie is not.

The people here don’t seem hot like Jamie and even when outside they don’t appear to be overly hot. When I am outside in 90 degree weather I always feel hot. I feel like there is a lesson to be learned, mainly less air conditioning in the US would be a good thing both for energy consumption and also because people would be more acclimated to the heat and would therefore be less hot when outside in the heat even if they were more hot on average.

When I flip this logic on its head however, I am not interested in the opposite. The idea of heating homes and businesses to 60 or 62 degrees to save energy and acclimate oneself to cold weather has no appeal to me. I’m guessing the same is true for Jamie and many others with air conditioning.