What is it about the New York Times op-ed page and every crackpot idea under the sun.

Somehow, they always find each other.

So now we have their latest: kill your air conditioner to save the planet

The Times found some guy in Salina, Kansas, who praises going without and says he does it himself:

Whenever people ask me how my wife and I have endured 25 Kansas summers almost entirely without air-conditioning, I like to say we do it because air-conditioning makes it too hot outside. We’re not ascetics, Luddites or misers; we just want to keep living comfortably, indoors and out.

It’s not just that air-conditioning is making our summers even hotter. (On a sweltering night in a city like Houston, the hot air that A.C. units blast out over the streets can raise outdoor temperatures up to three or four degrees.) It’s also that air-conditioning has altered the way most Americans experience heat.

Our bodies have grown so accustomed to climate-controlled indoor spaces, set at a chilly 69 degrees, that anything else can feel unbearable. And the greenhouse gases created by the roughly 90 percent of American households that own A.C. units mean that running them even in balmy temperatures is making the climate crisis worse.

Is he expecting some calamity that will leave us without air conditioning and so unadapted to that that we wouldn't be able to take it?

That's what it sounds like, what with greenie mandates from Democrats that would ensure that prices of air conditioning will soar so high there will be no air-conditioning for anyone except party elites.

Now, part of what he is saying is correct -- that if you live in a hot climate year round you get used to it.

I used to live in Singapore, for instance, out on the equator, where every plant in the ground is tropical and the temperature never varies from 100 degrees year round, summer, winter, or, in Singapore's case, rainy season or dry season.

It sounds horrible, but yes, you do get used to it and literally don't notice it after awhile. You adapt with light clothing, never putting on a jacket on the streets, and jogging only near sundown when it's a tad cooler. You feel grateful for the island-state's light sea breeze, because many sweltering places in Southeast Asia -- out in rural inland Thailand and Malaysia -- don't have that, and even for Singaporeans, those places offer the sensation of being baked in an oven.

But even with acclimatization to nonstop 100-degree weather, sensible Singaporeans also avail themselves of air conditioners year round and their government is very proud of having air-conditioned units in every apartment and indoor public space. Places just do better with air conditioning even if people are used to very continuously hot weather.

The writer does make the concession for Phoenix and Miami weather maybe not being practical for going without air conditioning. (He forgot Houston.) He even makes concessions for heat waves, which are pretty lethal.

But he broadly argues that people elsewhere should get used to going without because it's all better that way.

... if you live in the middle of the country, try leaving the air-conditioning off when it’s hot but not too hot.

So who's to decide what's "hot but not too hot"? He didn't say.

His prescriptions for cooling off in the hot sun instead of air conditioning are pretty bad, though:

During heat waves — such as the one that gripped the middle of the country this week, when temperatures rose above 100 degrees and our brains became heat-addled and the sheets sweat-soaked — we deploy a portable air-conditioner in the bedroom overnight. But this week was just the second time we’ve turned it on this year.

To keep us going through the rest of the summer, we rely on electric fans, which consume only about 2 percent of the energy needed to air-condition one room. They’re not only free of the refrigerants that amplify air-conditioning’s contribution to global warming; they can also save you money.

Sorry, that's fourth world. Fans? Portable air-con? You find that kind of cooling in places that have no access to air conditioning, or for that matter, electricity.

He's no longer talking about simply getting used to the sweltering heat (and smell) of zero air-conditioning, he's talking about cutting Americans' standards of living to fourth-world standards, matching those of eastern Nigeria or rural Burma now.

He even unwittingly offers a Hugo Chavez solution to zero air-conditioning:

When it gets too hot, we lightly spray water on our arms, legs and faces; the water helps dissipate a lot of heat. A quick, cold shower or a little time spent with that all-American favorite, the lawn sprinkler, also can bring relief.

When Caracas was enduring socialism-induced water and electrical shortages in 2009, the late unlamented Venezuelan dictator suggested that locals take three-minute showers and try dumping a bucket of water on themselves to cool off as he did during his mud-hut childhood, as it was "so refreshing."

What the whole argument underlines is that socialism is coming, and with socialism will come shortages of electricity, water and air-conditioning, so the sooner people get used to it on their own under the rubric of saving the planet, the better.

I doubt anyone really cares whether this guy in Salina, Kansas goes without air conditioning and stinks something fierce as a result. It's not a problem if he does that to himself, the problem is that he wants everyone else to do it, too. Normalize this idea in the New York Times and the coercion is coming.

His solution in some cases is to use more water, which is exactly what you don't do in places like Phoenix and Southern California where the prevailing problem is drought, and in California's case, socialist mismanagement of water resources, so it's all a matter of going back to mud huts in a reduced standard of living.

It's a bad idea yet far from the only bad idea the New York Times op-ed page has promoted. They've also promoted looting, the eating of bugs, and had a fit over a Tom Cotton op-ed. They've even defended Chavez from accusations of electoral cheating. Whenever a bad idea surfaces, the New York Times is there to promote it.

Now they're trying to get us to give up air-conditioning. This isn't their only bad idea, just their latest.

Image: Screen shot from Al-Jazeera video, via YouTube.