Enjoying the slight respite from the summer heat?

Don’t get too comfortable.

The weatherman — oops, the weather person — says we’re heading back to over 100 degrees  on Tuesday.

It’s why most folks wouldn’t think of living in the Great Central Valley without air conditioning.

It’s is, however, do-able.

My $105 PG&E bill for July proves it is.

To be clear, I don’t use AC at home.

Heavy use of windows — as in opening them — an open floor plan conducive to air circulation, enough ceiling fans as if I was inspired by the Altamont Pass wind farms, and large shade trees helping to semi-block the sun’s rays as it moves east to west from the Sierra to the Diablo Range makes sans air conditioning tolerable.

There is a circa 1990 AC wall unit that has only been turned on perhaps a dozen times for guests.

It makes more noise than cool air.

The only sound that is almost as deafening was the spinning of the old meter PG&E replaced a while back with one that was much smarter.

And there is a swamp-style cooling unit on the roof I have never turned on since I bought the house in 2008.

Do not misunderstand.

I use the AC in the car but arguably to a lesser degree than most.

As for work, windows that don’t open, having a work area against a western facing bank of floor to ceiling windows, and the fact there are others in the office makes AC essential.

As the result of a couple of interesting — and arguably one close call — with overindulgences in signature Central Valley summer heat, I made it a point long ago to adapt to the heat as much as possible.

This isn’t a slam on air conditioning.

But it is a set up to discuss the Rorschach test in Sacramento better known as the California Legislature.

You know the folks.

They are hell-bent on making the Golden State the Nanny State.

They run around like Chicken Little on steroids squawking.

Their rat-a-tat clucking always has a doomsday connotation.

And if it isn’t delivered in a rhythm that is almost always taxing, it’s end intent is to cage Californians in with more state regulations.

One mustn’t have free range taxpayers in a state that has the largest number of free range homeless in the United States.

When one also suffers from a Mother Hen complex you can’t resist telling people what to do.

After all, we’re just all simpletons unwashed by French Laundry cuisine and the wisdom that comes rubbing elbows with — and accepting campaign contributions from — the money changers aka lobbyists from PG&E to unions.

Given the mentality up in Sacramento and the hook, line and sinker embracement that California is heading toward the mother-of-all climate catastrophes one has to wonder.

Wonder what, you might ask?

California doesn’t require air conditioning in new residential construction.

Nor does it in rental housing.

That said, if a rental has an air conditioning unit the state requires it be kept in operating order.

To be clear, this is not meant to advocate for more state mandates.

But given the rhetoric spewing forth in the past two months of triple digit temperatures from Gov. Doomsday and most of the 120 occupants of the ultimate hen house that comes complete with a golden dome, we are all in eminent danger of dying from the climate.

People, of course,  have died from  the climate — whether it is floods, droughts, heat, hurricanes, snow and such — long before they started channeling Nostradamus.

Nostradamus and his 16th century predictions of catastrophic future events is a rank amateur compared to the California Legislature at times.

“Climate change is going to kill us all” is the foundational battle cry to mandate societal changes and justify taxing people to Kingdom Come.

We have been told repeatedly as we made our way through recent heat waves that death will be knocking on the door for tens of thousands of Californians thanks to people with death drips in steering wheels of fossil fueled vehicles.

After all, the state’s Climate Change Scoping Plan rolled out by the California Environmental Protection Agency in 2022 states Sacramento’s climate strategies would “prevent over 5,600 premature deaths in 2045” along with other avoided heat consequences such as cardiovascular disease.

And let’s not forget the “hundreds” we were told by media parroting the doomsday line when it came to those being killed off in California by the 2024 heat waves

So why, one might ask, why isn’t AC mandated in California?

Perhaps it has to do with the reality that the Centers for Disease Control — an institution known for dealing mostly in verifiable numbers and science — puts the heat-related annual death rate among Californians at 4.2 per million residents.

That is an average of less than 50 deaths in California each year tied to heat.

Or maybe it’s the fact building codes and development patterns dictated by the state over the years have resulted in housing structures that were never compatible with California’s climate to begin with.

Perhaps it is the reality if AC was universal such as in rundown housing the most vulnerable need — think farmworkers — there is no way the state could generate sufficient electricity and meet fossil fuel replacement goals and feed a power thirsty artificial intelligence boom.

Maybe it’s the bottom line derived from California green energy policies that have sent power costs into the outer stratosphere that would make it too excessive for the most vulnerable to afford to pay PG&E bills increasing faster than a speeding bullet when one turns on an AC unit.

Or maybe they’re just losing their touch.

In reality, it likely has more to do with what they will never admit.

Sacramento never connects the dots.

They view each action they take independent of any consequences it may create.

And since hardcore greenies likely view air conditioning as the devil’s handiwork, there is no hue and cry in Sacramento to mandate AC in California despite all the doomsday hyperbole during the recent heat wave.

Again, this is not meant to argue for such a mandate.

Instead, it is to question — based on their Chicken Little channeling — why they overlooked  such a move.

Perhaps they are too chicken to play their own game to its logical conclusion?

This column is the opinion of editor, Dennis Wyatt, and does not necessarily represent the opinions of The Bulletin or 209 Multimedia. He can be reached at dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com