--- title: Earth Day: Stop Trying to Control Nature description: We should embrace low-tech solutions to climate change canonical: https://time.com/4303938/stop-trying-to-control-nature/ author: TIME article:opinion: true article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2016-04-22T14:02:40.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:44:46.595Z article:section: Ideas og:title: Stop Trying to Control Nature og:description: We should embrace low-tech solutions to climate change og:url: https://time.com/4303938/stop-trying-to-control-nature/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb66cb7643fa8785/69889043cd1bbaf89870061f/gettyimages-200172034-001.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 5100 og:image:height: 2869 og:image:alt: 200172034-001 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Stop Trying to Control Nature twitter:description: We should embrace low-tech solutions to climate change twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltdb66cb7643fa8785/69889043cd1bbaf89870061f/gettyimages-200172034-001.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Stop Trying to Control Nature > Sponsored content. 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Inside TIME is the newsletter where TIME's Editor-in-Chief explains cover selection and the editorial reasoning behind major stories. It is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who is the editor of TIME? Sam Jacobs is TIME's Editor-in-Chief. He writes Inside TIME, a twice-weekly newsletter about the newsroom's reporting and editorial decisions. #### Is Inside TIME free? Yes. Inside TIME is a free newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. A paid TIME subscription is separate and available at time.com/subscribe-agent. ## Video: See Leonardo Dicaprio Slam Corporate Greed in the Fight Against Climate Change [Watch (HLS stream): See Leonardo Dicaprio Slam Corporate Greed in the Fight Against Climate Change](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/nth4pp3e.m3u8) (0:32)  _Published 2016-01-20. See Leonardo Dicaprio Slam Corporate Greed in the Fight Against Climate Change_ by [Erika Marie Bsumek](https://time.com/author/erika-marie-bsumek/) and [Betsy Frederick-Rothwell](https://time.com/author/betsy-frederick-rothwell/) Apr 22, 2016 2:02 PM UTC  Toddler (21-24 months) feeling air coming from room airconditioner Toddler (21-24 months) feeling air coming from room airconditioner Getty Images by [Erika Marie Bsumek](https://time.com/author/erika-marie-bsumek/) and [Betsy Frederick-Rothwell](https://time.com/author/betsy-frederick-rothwell/) Apr 22, 2016 2:02 PM UTC Earth Day was [designed](http://www.earthday.org/about/the-history-of-earth-day/) to make us pause and consider how our actions impact the natural environment. Before the summer weather arrives, and we unconsciously flip on our air-conditioning systems, it’s worth considering that [energy usage](http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/oct/26/cold-economy-cop21-global-warming-carbon-emissions) for cooling our homes and buildings will soon outpace that used for heating. We need to recognize that in our success in controlling nature, we’ve become alienated from it—which has potentially [disastrous consequences](http://climate.nasa.gov/effects/) as the climate changes. For this reason alone, it is worth examining the longer history of “climate control” systems, not just their technical history, but also how they shape our very notions of nature, comfort and climate more broadly. Air conditioning, the quintessential form of climate control, was originally developed in the early 20th century to regulate humidity levels in factories, making the production of [moisture-sensitive materials](http://www.hagley.org/librarynews/published-collections-modern-air-conditioning-every-day-good-day) such as textiles and food products more efficient and predictable. But such predictability could only be achieved by shutting out daily and seasonal variation in weather; a controlled “indoor” environment had to be isolated from the “outdoor” environment. On both sides of the line, the unpredictability of nature had become a problem to be solved. The idea of controlling nature was not limited to indoor environments but was part of a larger national impulse. Out-of-doors, large hydroelectric dams, like the [Hoover Dam](http://www.usbr.gov/lc/hooverdam/), were built to control unruly rivers and produce electricity. Likewise, engineers such as [Willis Carrier](http://www.williscarrier.com/1876-1902.php) endeavored to convince people that their individual environments should be controlled and that comfort could be [quantified](http://nyti.ms/1OKY6uE). The impulse to build a technologically controlled environment came to dominate not just office space but residential living as well. By 1960, [passive-cooling features](https://www3.epa.gov/region5/sustainable/energyadvice.html) were removed from homes in developing suburbs across the country from [Levittown](http://statemuseumpa.org/levittown/one/b.html), Penn., to [Lakewood, Calif](http://www.colapublib.org/history/lakewood/). Some of this was driven by the specifics of the post-war housing boom. Air-conditioning manufacturers convinced large-scale developers to remove formerly common features such as operable windows, sleeping porches, attic fans, insect screens, ventilation louvers and venting windows in order to afford the costs of expensive air conditioning equipment. Electrical utility companies actively supported these efforts, as historians [Andrew Needham](http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10369.html) and [Adam Rome](http://www.cambridge.org/us/academic/subjects/history/american-history-after-1945/bulldozer-countryside-suburban-sprawl-and-rise-american-environmentalism) explain, in order to sell more electricity to homeowners in summer, which had traditionally been a low energy-use season. But the utilities got too much of a good thing. Consumption of energy spiked, leaving us dependent on it. Now we have [brownouts](http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2001-08-10/business/0108100232%5F1%5Fbrownouts-programmable-thermostat-air-conditioners) in the summer months when AC use peaks. An extended drought in California also means hydroelectric dams, such as Hoover, will [produce less](http://www.energy.ca.gov/drought/drought%5FFAQs.html) energy. With these technology-dependent changes to the built environment, even if we wanted to turn off our climate-control systems in summer (or even spring or fall), it’s difficult and uncomfortable to do so in the U.S. because we can no longer rely on passive-cooling features such as operable windows in our homes and offices. Such actions have shut nature out, and us away from it, including the birds and crickets we can no longer hear through window screens. This increased alienation from outdoors now inherent in our built environment helps obscure the reality that the climate is changing around us. Americans now spend almost [90% of our time indoors](http://rdcu.be/hhIF) and the ubiquity of living in a controlled indoor climate lets us ignore not only the effects of a changing climate, but also the people excluded from such controlled climates, whether by economics or [historical patterns](http://www.understandingrace.org/history/society/post%5Fwar%5Feconomic%5Fboom.html) of prejudice (or a combination of both). Rachel Carson’s [_Silent Spring_](http://www.rachelcarson.org/SilentSpring.aspx) along with well-publicized man-made environmental disasters of the [1960s](http://www2.bren.ucsb.edu/~dhardy/1969%5FSanta%5FBarbara%5FOil%5FSpill/Home.html) and [1970s](https://www.epa.gov/aboutepa/love-canal-tragedy) made many Americans realize that science and technology created problems as well as a solved them. Today many commentators optimistically but paradoxically propose to solve the problems of science and technology [with yet more science and technology](http://www.citylab.com/weather/2013/09/how-prepare-climate-change-put-air-conditioners-schools/6863/), not less. We don’t need to return to some technology-free version of the past, but low-tech solutions, practices and patterns that have been abandoned could offer alternatives and help us reduce our alienation from nature. Older houses and buildings that retained passive-cooling features should be rewarded for reactivating those features, not just for adding new technologies like solar panels and more energy efficient air conditioning equipment. Rewards should also go to new building projects that [reintroduce](http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S209526351400003X) the passive features as part of green building design. Subsidies may be needed to create the critical mass that made air conditioning the default pattern. But we also need to re-learn how to live with nature rather than trying to control it. 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