For the sake of the environment, I will give up cars with rapid acceleration, soothing incandescent light, delicious out-of-season vegetables from the southern hemisphere, and various other accoutrements of civilization.  But you'll get my A/C when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers.

Brad what I find more absurd is the reason for A/C in such tropical climates as Arizona where natural ventilation and evaporative cooling are significantly more efficient but also provide better cooling capabilities when taken into account that for houses, evaporative cooling can be practically used as "on demand" whereas a/c needs a hermetically sealed envelope and running it for several hours before seeing any significant cooling all the while the naive homeowner cranks the thermostat ever lower thinking that "if I turn it cooler it'll get colder faster".

But the bigger issues is our capacity to design one-size-fits-all cooling and heating solutions for the one-size-fits-all housing designs we plop like turds on the sidewalk across the U.S. The same floor plan with the same windows. But when developers use a cookie-cutter approach to design homes with no regard to regional climate needs it only makes matters worse.

singlespeed:

Your problem is that you live in a magical world where everyone should live and behave a certain way and when they don't, you find that to be an annoyance.  How dare they live in the suburbs contributing to urban sprawl?  Or how dare they have central air.  Well, some people like large homes where their kids have a backyard and porch to play.  Not everyone enjoys apartment buildings.  Some people like using SUVs for their roominess.  Why are we trying to impose on their freedoms? To each his own:

In case you're thinking I'm some fat cat with 6 Hummers and 10 plasma tv's (like Al Gore and his electric bill), I didn't run my A/C on the hottest day of the year last week.  I even turn off my cable box in the morning cause the thing consumes 30w on standby.  This is personal choice.  That's what makes America great.

Or you could hook it up to a nuclear reactor and have no greenhouse emissions at all.

JW...get off your high horse of "personal choice". Did you even get the point of my post? In Arizona there are better ways of cooling a house than A/C. Did I say you had to live in a hot box? No. Did I say you had  to give up your precious cable TV? No. Did I say you couldn't live in a big home with a back yard? No. When I post about these issues it's about finding better ways to do them without reducing the quality of life and it's through the lense of, you know, finding and designing solutions to do that.

You take a contrary view to anything that remotely questions the "American Way of Life" as either negative, socialist or otherwise. I use a critical eye to make things better.  But instead you go on about me living in a fantasy world? Where did that conclusion come from? My post didn't talk about people using mysterious technologies to cool their homes. It didn't talk about flying monkeys coming out of your ass every time you post something either.

I was talking about designing houses that could better respond to the place where they're built instead of a one-size-fits all approach and then slapping an a/c unit and calling it a day.

Next time read more closely or better still actually contribute to the discussion instead of using clichés and red herring statements like "Why are we trying to impose on their freedoms?"

Evaporative cooling is not good for people with rheumatism or other health issues - which encompasses a large percentage of the older population in Arizona.  And not many people like the moisture on their skin at all times.  There's a reason why people use air conditioning - it's a proven technology and it works.

What it ultimately boils down to is cost.  Sure, Priuses give better mileage but they cost more.  Your custom-designed solutions will cost the landowner more to buy.  Whether or not the electric bills' savings will offset this cost completely is another matter.

JW...

First off the level of humidity involved with evaporative cooling is not much higher than the ambient humidity level of say Phoenix. And the low levels of humidity used in evaporative cooling have minimal effect on rheumatism. So what do you say to all the old timers who live and play outside in not-so dry Florida? Oh wait...you'd have them spend their entire life indoors to prove that they can't live in humidity?

Again you're missing the point of my post JW and you shoot yourself in the foot by claiming evaporative cooling costs more than a/c. Which it doesn't. Even the old but proven technology of the 'swamp' cooler costs less to run than an a/c unit based on total energy consumption. There are areas of the U.S. where a/c makes more sense because of the high, ambient humidity levels and outdoor air quality issues. There are areas where evaporative cooling makes more sense. Stop thinking of housing as a Happy Meal.

We're not talking about high cost solutions to how a typical house is designed for its location. You don't design the same house for New England as you do in Arizona. That's the point I"m trying to make. If you don't, can't or won't understand that all I can do is point you in the direction of outside sources that will help you understand it. The solutions I'm talking about don't cost more and can actually reduce the cost of owning your house.

Here Come Electric Cars--