Over-reliance on air conditioning makes us more vulnerable to extreme heat, study finds
Could a reliance on air conditioning actually be making us more vulnerable to extreme heat? An ANU study in the Northern Territory has found that despite spending more time in airconditioned spaces in recent decades people have paradoxically become more vulnerable to heat-related deaths.
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00:00 Well, the findings are really quite unexpected.
00:04 We did the study of 40 years of mortality back to 1980 across the Northern Territory.
00:11 So for every death, we matched it for the temperature on the day.
00:14 And what we found is that surprisingly, the population is generally getting more vulnerable
00:22 to heat or less resilient.
00:24 So on a 45 degree day in a town like Catherine today, people are more likely to succumb to
00:30 heat than they were in 1980, despite being the same temperature.
00:33 And what we also found is that Aboriginal people are remarkably resilient to heat.
00:38 And so the first part of the finding was very unexpected, given that there has been very
00:44 substantial gains in socioeconomic status, much better buildings, much greater access
00:51 to air conditioned space for non-Indigenous people.
00:54 It is really surprising and concerning that the population as a whole is actually becoming
01:02 more susceptible to heat.
01:04 And so our hypothesis around that is that the more time that you spend in air conditioning
01:08 is that, well, certainly it's sedentary time.
01:12 It's insular time, you're not communicating and spending social time with your community.
01:19 And it's sedentary time.
01:20 So you're not actually exercising.
01:22 And perhaps even more important than that, we know that our bodies are climatised to
01:26 heat.
01:27 And so with the Tokyo Olympics, we sent our athletes to Darwin to acclimatise for 15 days
01:33 and they performed much better as a result of that physiological acclimatisation to heat.
01:40 However, the air conditioning, living in an air conditioned space, prevents your body
01:45 from actually acclimatising and being able to perform and be resilient to the heat.
01:51 So we're now using, if you consider air conditioning similar to sugar in your coffee, I like a
01:58 sugar in my coffee, it makes it taste a little bit better, but too much sugar is just simply
02:02 bad for your health.
02:03 And the truth is the same for air conditioning.
02:05 It actually removes you from the climate in which you're living and it de-acclimatises
02:10 you and makes you more vulnerable to heat stress and eventually heat death.
02:14 Is one of the lessons here that, you know, in the hottest parts of the day, we should
02:18 really be slowing down?
02:20 Yeah, so there's some really interesting things coming out of Europe at the moment.
02:24 The siesta, which has its origins in hot climates around the world, has been in decline, particularly
02:32 in Spain.
02:33 In 2017, the Spanish Prime Minister tried to ban the siesta.
02:39 And what's happened recently in the heat waves in Europe is there's conversations and policy
02:44 makers considering the siesta all the way up into Germany.
02:48 And it's one of the really interesting things with one of my co-collaborators on this paper,
02:53 Warrumbunga elder Norman Frank Chuparula, in his reflection of why non-Indigenous people
03:00 are more vulnerable to heat than, for instance, Warrumbunga people.
03:04 He's really clear.
03:05 He says that a lot of the houses that are built in towns like Tennant Creek and Darwin
03:10 are built for an English climate.
03:12 And when you look at a lot of the houses up in Darwin, they are definitely not very climate
03:17 considered and they have a long way to go in terms of being more climate appropriate.
03:22 The policy makers also need to really start to contemplate things like the siesta as a
03:28 cultural phenomenon.
03:29 And certainly I remember in the 1990s, I travelled to Spain and it was a wonderful thing to have
03:33 an afternoon nap on a hot day and the whole society lived around it.
03:38 There is no reason why a hot country like Australia shouldn't really be seriously thinking
03:44 about the utility of a siesta.
03:46 It's free.
03:47 It costs nothing.
03:48 It doesn't rack up big energy bills.
03:51 It doesn't create a carbon footprint itself.
03:54 And perhaps most importantly, it's good for your health.
03:56 It's time for you to spend quietly in the temperature of the climate in which you're
04:02 in and that helps your body get used to that climate.
04:05 Simon, I'll never say no to a nap as well.
04:08 I guess just very briefly, the other thing that's interesting out of this is, as you
04:13 say, Europeans came to Australia and imported English houses and Dutch houses to a country
04:18 with a very different climate.
04:21 What lessons in this work are there about how we design homes?
04:24 Well, I'm actually working with some fantastic architects from Office, from TROPPO and Professor
04:31 Paul Mamet with some Warramunga elders and we're really looking at working with Warramunga
04:36 elders and finding lessons from their deep and profound understanding of the climate
04:41 and the environment in which they live, their ancestral lands, to try and come up with much
04:45 better designs for the future.
04:47 So a well-designed house will allow people to live more comfortably in a hotter climate
04:51 with lower energy bills and lower carbon footprint.
04:55 And so I think particularly for Northern Australia, there needs to be a rapid recognition that
05:01 the way we are building houses, both Indigenous and non-Indigenous, is really inferior.
05:07 And so if you look at the Northern Territory as an example, it has the lowest requirement
05:11 for energy efficiency rating of any state in Australia in terms of new houses.
05:17 The Northern Territory should have the highest rating and we should really be looking at
05:21 incorporating things like passive cooling into the design of houses.
05:26 And so this project we're working on, Wilya Djanda with Warramunga elders, is really exciting
05:30 and it's great to remind ourselves that First Nations people of this country have some incredible
05:37 wisdom of how to not only live, but to thrive in hot climates.
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