After Cooling
On Freon, Global Warming, and the Terrible Cost of Comfort
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4.0 • 1 Rating
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- $13.99
Publisher Description
This “ambitious [and] delightful” (The New York Times) work of literary nonfiction interweaves the science and history of the powerful refrigerant (and dangerous greenhouse gas) Freon with a haunting meditation on how to live meaningfully and morally in a rapidly heating world.
In After Cooling, Eric Dean Wilson braids together air-conditioning history, climate science, road trips, and philosophy to tell the story of the birth, life, and afterlife of Freon, the refrigerant that ripped a hole larger than the continental United States in the ozone layer. As he traces the refrigerant’s life span from its invention in the 1920s—when it was hailed as a miracle of scientific progress—to efforts in the 1980s to ban the chemical (and the resulting political backlash), Wilson finds himself on a journey through the American heartland, trailing a man who buys up old tanks of Freon stockpiled in attics and basements to destroy what remains of the chemical before it can do further harm.
Wilson is at heart an essayist, looking far and wide to tease out what particular forces in American culture—in capitalism, in systemic racism, in our values—combined to lead us into the Freon crisis and then out. “Meticulously researched and engagingly written” (Amitav Ghosh), this “knockout debut” (New York Journal of Books) offers a rare glimpse of environmental hope, suggesting that maybe the vast and terrifying problem of global warming is not beyond our grasp to face.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Wilson, who teaches climate-themed writing and environmental justice at Queens College, debuts with a tour de force on the steep costs of living in a world that prioritizes personal comfort. He focuses on the coolant Freon and related chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) that have wrought havoc on the ozone layer, arguing that though air conditioning is seen as a necessity, it hasn't improved people's quality of life. He points out that low-income people, "especially those of color," are less likely to have access to air conditioning but are more affected by the environmental consequences of climate change (Black women, he writes, "experience the highest rate of complications during pregnancy due to heat and pollution"). Controlling and destroying refrigerants is the best path forward to mitigate climate change, he writes, and his message is as urgent as it is idealistic: he urges readers "to unravel the political, economic, and cultural structures that produce our desires for narrow, individualized, personal comfort, to shift the narratives that put the responsibility on individual will instead of collective community" in the hopes that they'll consider the implications of such everyday decisions as switching on an AC unit. Wilson's impressive take offers climate-minded readers much to consider.
