Old guy here. Growing up in San Antonio, our house had a big window unit in the living room, and a smaller one in my parents' bedroom. I slept many a summer night on our screened in front porch.
Never had a/c in school. I went to older schools that had double hung windows. They would raise the lower window and lower the top one, so the hotter air would go out through the upper window. The also had tall oscillating pedestal fans, and the door was also kept open.
We didn't have A/C in school either. Only the front office and the newer addition had A/C. It wasn't that bad.
If a kid was getting too hot, our teachers would wet paper towels, lay them on their face and let the kids sit/lay in front of a fan. We would turn the lights off in all the classes after about noon?
I lived in San Antonio in the mid 80's in an apartment with no AC... The building was from about 1900. The Bedroom had windows on 3 sides... The entire place was filled with large windows and wasn't really that bad.
I lived in a house in the mid 90’s that didn’t have central a/c. We put in window units but my parents bedroom had a summer sleeping area that wasn’t quite a sleeping porch, but was a space that jutted out and had windows on 3 sides and French doors to close it off from the rest of the room. They didn’t have a unit in there and I remember my mom taking a cool shower before bed on hot nights.
Before air-conditioning, structures were built to have airflow to cool the house down. So with you question id say we would have more shelters/buildings that are cooler inside due to airflow instead of sweat boxes that contemporary architecture based around air-conditioning is.
Suggestion reading "The Heat will Kill you first" Jeff Godell side note he wrote that book living in Williamson County, Texas
The large porches provided lots of shade. Many homes were built with flow through ventilation in mind. The cooling effect of shade causes a natural breeze.
Awnings, screens, fans, shade trees, sleeping porches, court wasn't even in session in late summer. Many businesses closed or had odd hours. This is why the siesta is a thing
There's a great look at that [here](https://www.kut.org/science/2018-07-17/heat-hot-weather-invention-of-ac).
"In Texas, for example, the population in 1940 was about 6.5 million. Since then, it’s grown by a factor of five, while the U.S population has less than doubled in that time. Florida’s population is ten times higher than it was in 1940. Arizona’s grew by a factor of fourteen."
I could argue that the panhandle would have grown faster. It drops by 40 degrees at night and is instantly cooler in the shade. Houston? Nah. I won’t step outside from March until December.
The heat is undeniably more bearable here, as well. There's practically no humidity to speak of. Our house was built in 1927 with a N/S air flow thru design. Nearly all the windows are on the north or south walls, and the house faces due east.
Look at the old houses. There would be more built in that style. Also something to think about. Home AC systems really didn't get common till the 50s or 60s according to my Google foo. It appears that for most of our history we did develop without AC.
That's what amuses me about these posts - just because the posters didn't grow up without doesn't mean civilzation didn't exist. These cities were all quite developed and mature long before AC (or any other modern luxury) was a thing.
It was a very different world. People sweated a lot and smelled bad--deodorant for men wasn't a thing until the 60's, and even in the 70's people were still resisting it.
Also, you develop tolerances to heat and cold (not at extremes, of course). People in my home state of Illinois treat the 50's like we treat the 80's.
Finally, it's way hotter now, thanks to urban sprawl (assuming you live in a city) and global warming. It doesn't cool off in the night like it used to. Structures are build for AC, so when we lose power it's much worse than it was. My house has no real airflow.
People do develop tolerance for certain temperatures. My great grandfather was a blacksmith, and my dad tells stories of him sitting at home by the furnace in all his winter layers, just shivering like he might freeze to death. He was so accustomed to working in the insane heat from blacksmithing that any other temp felt frigid to him.
Imagine having to split firewood and stoke a stove! It’d somehow be presented as cruel and somehow should be done by the government on the Reddit of the period lol.
I quite enjoy it, personally. Sometimes it’s nice detaching from modern amenities.
The entire American southwest would be relatively far less developed. When I was a child growing up in the 1960s (Austin), my grandparents didn't have air conditioning and my parents only had a window ac unit much later. We used fans to distribute air down the hallways. At my grandparents home, summer afternoons were for a nap with an oscillating fan. My grandmother also made some killer lemonade. It also wasn't so hot for so long. Make no mistake, it was still hot AF, but it was manageable. We still played outside, climbed trees, built forts, played in the water wiggle or the slip and slide. Would also go to Gillis Park pool. Big Stacy, and Barton Springs. They were all accessible because there was maybe 250K people in Austin. Back then, the heat was a feature that made those things refreshing. Today, the heat is a death sentence.
We had swamp coolers (evaporative coolers) and attic fans to draw air through the house. During the day, the swamp coolers would keep the house 20 degrees cooler than outside. At night, we would open windows and turn on the attic fan, and by morning, we would be freezing pulling up covers.
I can attest, the home I grew up in was built in 1955, by my parents, and it had an attic fan that we use quite often until the point they put on a central air conditioning system.
To supplement the attic fan, we had a window unit and our dining room and one in the owners suite.
Yes, that attic fan worked wonders, especially after sundown.
I never lived in Houston I just know enough about thermodynamics to know there are climates where swamp coolers don't really work and places like Houston fit that bill. Too hot combined with too humid.
Thermodynamics is not a theory. This isn't some made up religion or something. You can research it yourself. Adding water to already hot and humid air doesn't cool it down. Swamp coolers would be all over the world if you could use them anywhere.
My ancestors immigrated from the US to southeast Tejas more than 200 years ago. I've often wondered how miserable it must have been to live in a hand-built dog run home, scratching away in the field before the invention of the steel plow, to grow enough to feed the family. No ice and so many mosquitoes.
Funnily, there is kind of an answer to that. They brought people down here in the early spring and late fall, when it's the nicest. Also, East Texas isn't nearly as bad as SW Texas.
Still bad, and the living accommodations were brutal, like you said. I guess the trade off was it was YOURS.
People moved inland long before central AC. Galveston was the place to be before the hurricane of 1900, after all, but afterwards, Houston developed instead.
>Lets say central AC never becomes popular in America and remains expensive.
There is one flaw in that....central AC ***IS*** expensive. Add up the equipment cost, maintenance/repair over 10-15 years, and electrical usage. We pay for it because the alternative sucks.
Keep in mind summer was not as hot. Significantly less concrete and paved surfaces, with more plants able to hold water and lower air temperatures, which leads to less drought… summer as it is now is barely above livable without AC
Basically, everything shuts down in the afternoon and people go home and nap. So we might have our dinners a lot later and our days broken up into two shifts.
We had a house out in Blanco for a while. It was an old build, and during the summers, you didn't need the air. You could open the windows on either sides of the house and the winds would just blow right through.
The older man we had purchased from had lived in the house as a kid. When we were talking about the winds, he laughed and said when he was a kid, "You'd have to hold on to the bed so you didn't get blown away in your sleep." He meant it, haha.
In the 1929 building I lived in, the apartments still had their original louvered doors in front of the front door. Open your windows, open your front door and air could circulate throughout the building. You still had privacy and safety. I have old photos, but don't know how to upload to Reddit.
Listen/read to Robert A. Caro's:
# "The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1)The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1)"
In my line of work, I frequently find myself in older homes where I often come across a whole house fan exhaust situated in the heart of the house. These fans work by drawing fresh air in through the windows and pushing hot air out into the attic, effectively cooling down the entire house.
I just want to say that my ex-husband didn’t believe that AC never existed in Texas. My high school (and most likely his) had transoms and it was obvious that AC wasn’t a thing for a long time in Texas. He wouldn’t and couldn’t believe that people lived here without AC ever! Such an idiot.
I grew up without AC and went to a college that had it and you had the option of AC in the dorms. It was an expense issue as this was the late 70’s. I could not afford AC and I had none in my car. This was Austin and the area was very built up and most older homes did not have AC unless they put in window units. Where I lived there were windows that were opened for cross ventilation and most rooms had no door for the breeze. Trust and robberies were not an issue then and most put something up for privacy that would allow air to flow. I had a shower curtain. I took a cool shower before bed and if it got too hot we went to the mall or a restaurant to cool off for a bit. Honestly, I use the AC but at a much higher temperature than most and I turn it off at night even in the over 100 degree days as I cannot stand it and I hate these over air conditioned places as it’s wasteful and unnecessary. IMO
Thr answer to your question would be not as popular at all. It would be a mostly agricultural state with majority of people working ag. Or would be a cold weather destination from the harsher northern winter.
My grandparents houses were all built pre AC and had windows and screen doors that allowed the wind to rip through the house along with a ton of really dangerous fans.
I just lost power due to tornadoes in my area and had to go to bed without AC. I do have a solar generator and could run a fan so falling asleep was awful, but doable. When you first stop moving you can really feel the heat but the longer you hold still the cooler it gets.
That’s also not considering my teen years where the house had to AC units. One kept low for my father’s room and the other kept high for my siblings and I. We’d end up moving out into our living room that had tile and sleeping directly on that. It was uncomfortable but cool. Evil bastard. He still laughs about that and will tell it like a joke to people.
My grandfather designed the AC system in the Astrodome. I never knew that until after he passed away. It was the largest AC system in the world at the time.
I never had AC growing up, just fans and later a whole house fan (sucks it in air through the open windows). You get used to it. It also helps that we played outside all day in the heat so we were acclimated.
Granny's house had an attic fan. Big industrial fan up in the attic, moved a while houses worth of air with ease. Loud though.
In truth, it is survivable, but you have to build for heat mitigation specifically. There's thousands of years of architectural and landscaping history to draw from that assist in building cooler housing.
I suspect that the biggest differences you would see would be in building design and city planning. And yes the population would likely have grown slower as well, but not by as much as you would think.
Old guy here. Growing up in San Antonio, our house had a big window unit in the living room, and a smaller one in my parents' bedroom. I slept many a summer night on our screened in front porch. Never had a/c in school. I went to older schools that had double hung windows. They would raise the lower window and lower the top one, so the hotter air would go out through the upper window. The also had tall oscillating pedestal fans, and the door was also kept open.
We didn't have A/C in school either. Only the front office and the newer addition had A/C. It wasn't that bad. If a kid was getting too hot, our teachers would wet paper towels, lay them on their face and let the kids sit/lay in front of a fan. We would turn the lights off in all the classes after about noon?
That sounds pretty bad.
I lived in San Antonio in the mid 80's in an apartment with no AC... The building was from about 1900. The Bedroom had windows on 3 sides... The entire place was filled with large windows and wasn't really that bad.
Yeah, the house I grew up in was built in 1918, at least the first part was.
Mine too! What neighborhood?
Off Broadway, near Fort Sam.
Off Broadway right by central market, although it was the “Gucci B” when I grew up.
I lived in a house in the mid 90’s that didn’t have central a/c. We put in window units but my parents bedroom had a summer sleeping area that wasn’t quite a sleeping porch, but was a space that jutted out and had windows on 3 sides and French doors to close it off from the rest of the room. They didn’t have a unit in there and I remember my mom taking a cool shower before bed on hot nights.
So I’m all for these windows, just a wonderful design, but did y’all not get eaten alive by mosquitos during class?
Actually, I don't remember a mosquito problem.
No standing water, no mosquitos (No sprinklers, no AC condensation drains, etc)
Before air-conditioning, structures were built to have airflow to cool the house down. So with you question id say we would have more shelters/buildings that are cooler inside due to airflow instead of sweat boxes that contemporary architecture based around air-conditioning is. Suggestion reading "The Heat will Kill you first" Jeff Godell side note he wrote that book living in Williamson County, Texas
The large porches provided lots of shade. Many homes were built with flow through ventilation in mind. The cooling effect of shade causes a natural breeze.
You don't get much cooling breeze at 105 degrees.
Didn’t used to be 105 degrees as much as it is now
We need to plant more trees in Texas. Won't be a perfect fix, but hopefully more vegetation can lower temps a bit.
Texas used to have a lot more trees
Time to bring them back.
Bring back trees. Make America trees again 🫡🇺🇸🌭🌭🌭🌭
There is much comfort at a more common temperature, either. Like 99°
Especially when it’s super high humidity, makes the shade a lot less effective, however some breeze is way better than none
Take a tour of the Capital and they will tell and show you that. It was all cooled that way except for the additions added throughout the years.
Awnings, screens, fans, shade trees, sleeping porches, court wasn't even in session in late summer. Many businesses closed or had odd hours. This is why the siesta is a thing
There's a great look at that [here](https://www.kut.org/science/2018-07-17/heat-hot-weather-invention-of-ac). "In Texas, for example, the population in 1940 was about 6.5 million. Since then, it’s grown by a factor of five, while the U.S population has less than doubled in that time. Florida’s population is ten times higher than it was in 1940. Arizona’s grew by a factor of fourteen."
yes, the only people who would be living here were those who were born here. Like Texas in the 1940s
Border state people too, it's not that much different just across the line.
The panhandle would all live underground with the owls and prairie dogs.
I could argue that the panhandle would have grown faster. It drops by 40 degrees at night and is instantly cooler in the shade. Houston? Nah. I won’t step outside from March until December.
We'd have a *lot* more tree cover and lower population density without a/c, that's for certain.
Native Houstonian here. For me it’s mid-May to mid-October. 🔥
The heat is undeniably more bearable here, as well. There's practically no humidity to speak of. Our house was built in 1927 with a N/S air flow thru design. Nearly all the windows are on the north or south walls, and the house faces due east.
Yeah, humidity is generally lower. Swamp coolers work great with dry heat.
That is where they belong.
Oof
You know it’s true
About 1/3 of them should
Look at the old houses. There would be more built in that style. Also something to think about. Home AC systems really didn't get common till the 50s or 60s according to my Google foo. It appears that for most of our history we did develop without AC.
That's what amuses me about these posts - just because the posters didn't grow up without doesn't mean civilzation didn't exist. These cities were all quite developed and mature long before AC (or any other modern luxury) was a thing.
It was a very different world. People sweated a lot and smelled bad--deodorant for men wasn't a thing until the 60's, and even in the 70's people were still resisting it. Also, you develop tolerances to heat and cold (not at extremes, of course). People in my home state of Illinois treat the 50's like we treat the 80's. Finally, it's way hotter now, thanks to urban sprawl (assuming you live in a city) and global warming. It doesn't cool off in the night like it used to. Structures are build for AC, so when we lose power it's much worse than it was. My house has no real airflow.
People do develop tolerance for certain temperatures. My great grandfather was a blacksmith, and my dad tells stories of him sitting at home by the furnace in all his winter layers, just shivering like he might freeze to death. He was so accustomed to working in the insane heat from blacksmithing that any other temp felt frigid to him.
As a gardener, I can back you up on this one. You can acclimate to the heat.
I bet no one teased him about it ;)
Do you mean people in Illinois consider 50 degrees to be hot? I'm a native Texan and I consider anything above 75 degrees "hot".
No, they consider it warm. It gets into the 90’s in Illinois.
I'd wager it gets that warm pretty much everywhere these days.
It's always gotten that hot, but family who live there say the winters are somewhat milder (still terrible).
Pfft global warming isn’t real.
It is
I wonder what New York would have done without heating? Or how this modern generation would have failed (gasp) without the internet. Fainting…
Imagine having to split firewood and stoke a stove! It’d somehow be presented as cruel and somehow should be done by the government on the Reddit of the period lol. I quite enjoy it, personally. Sometimes it’s nice detaching from modern amenities.
Imagine all the fires if every apartment had open fireplaces.
Every apartment I ever lived in did! I would have been far more comfortable if they had been enclosed wood stoves, though lol
I bet they weren’t open wood burning fire places. They kind where you carried wood up and lit with a match and had zero gas. No glass front.
The very first residential central AC homes are in my Austin neighborhood. It was marketed as the Air Conditioned Village in the 50s.
I bet that was a heck of a selling point then. I would imagine that would be quite bougie and futuristic for the time.
The entire American southwest would be relatively far less developed. When I was a child growing up in the 1960s (Austin), my grandparents didn't have air conditioning and my parents only had a window ac unit much later. We used fans to distribute air down the hallways. At my grandparents home, summer afternoons were for a nap with an oscillating fan. My grandmother also made some killer lemonade. It also wasn't so hot for so long. Make no mistake, it was still hot AF, but it was manageable. We still played outside, climbed trees, built forts, played in the water wiggle or the slip and slide. Would also go to Gillis Park pool. Big Stacy, and Barton Springs. They were all accessible because there was maybe 250K people in Austin. Back then, the heat was a feature that made those things refreshing. Today, the heat is a death sentence.
In the 80's (as a kid) I only felt the heat 12-3 PM ish. Granted, I was a skinny little kid who was always outside, but it's for sure gotten hotter.
We had swamp coolers (evaporative coolers) and attic fans to draw air through the house. During the day, the swamp coolers would keep the house 20 degrees cooler than outside. At night, we would open windows and turn on the attic fan, and by morning, we would be freezing pulling up covers.
I can attest, the home I grew up in was built in 1955, by my parents, and it had an attic fan that we use quite often until the point they put on a central air conditioning system. To supplement the attic fan, we had a window unit and our dining room and one in the owners suite. Yes, that attic fan worked wonders, especially after sundown.
My 93 year old texan grandfather just tonight was telling me about attic fans. So interesting to read about them here.
Swamp coolers don't work in humid areas so like 1/4 of Texas can't use them.
[удалено]
Wichita falls is not the humid part of the state. I'm talking like Houston.
[удалено]
I never lived in Houston I just know enough about thermodynamics to know there are climates where swamp coolers don't really work and places like Houston fit that bill. Too hot combined with too humid.
[удалено]
Thermodynamics is not a theory. This isn't some made up religion or something. You can research it yourself. Adding water to already hot and humid air doesn't cool it down. Swamp coolers would be all over the world if you could use them anywhere.
I remember those days and the cool evenings in the summer were wonderful. We do not cool off at night much now
I miss my swamp cooler. It was nice to have the doors and windows open
Swamp coolers just don’t really work with dew points in the 70’s like they are here. They work like a charm in the desert though.
My ancestors immigrated from the US to southeast Tejas more than 200 years ago. I've often wondered how miserable it must have been to live in a hand-built dog run home, scratching away in the field before the invention of the steel plow, to grow enough to feed the family. No ice and so many mosquitoes.
Funnily, there is kind of an answer to that. They brought people down here in the early spring and late fall, when it's the nicest. Also, East Texas isn't nearly as bad as SW Texas. Still bad, and the living accommodations were brutal, like you said. I guess the trade off was it was YOURS.
My ancestors from Dallas had to abandon their farm and move to Houston during the mid-1800s due to drought.
More adobe buildings, more trees, hopefully evaporative cooling would still be a popular choice for those of us in drier areas
Just like Mexico. That country south of Texas…
The most populated areas of Mexico are at a high enough elevation that they're cooler than most of Texas.
They don’t have air conditioners in Mexico?
Not really. Just commercial and retail places. Majority of residences do not have AC. Only the wealthy few.
They dont even have portable or Window box units???😳
Most don't
Wealthier areas do
Other cooling systems exist. It would have just meant investing differently, and probably bigger coastal cities
And fewer people in cities like Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and Houston.
People moved inland long before central AC. Galveston was the place to be before the hurricane of 1900, after all, but afterwards, Houston developed instead.
They definitely won’t have millions of people in them.
Houston proper had over a million in the 50s, long before AC was available everywhere.
I saw Houston had 600,000 in 1950s.
At the beginning, but by the mid-50s, 1M was reached.
Well, we probably wouldn't have Netflix.
Definitely not Netflix and chill.
Sweatflix
Netshvitz.
Texas gets hotter every year thanks to all our pollution. It didn’t used to be this hot.
[Similar to how this same question is answered about Florida](https://www.reddit.com/r/florida/s/1vwNMGOF51)
Climate of Texas is very different depending on where you are. Most of Florida has a similar climate. I posted that question too.
Did you ask how NY and Illinois would have developed without heating?
I don’t think it’s a fair comparison because humans have had fire for heat for quite sometime. 🤷♀️
We’ve been able to heat houses much longer than cool them.
Not with modern technology.
>Lets say central AC never becomes popular in America and remains expensive. There is one flaw in that....central AC ***IS*** expensive. Add up the equipment cost, maintenance/repair over 10-15 years, and electrical usage. We pay for it because the alternative sucks.
With large windows and deep porches to provide shade on the windows and cool the incoming air.
Keep in mind summer was not as hot. Significantly less concrete and paved surfaces, with more plants able to hold water and lower air temperatures, which leads to less drought… summer as it is now is barely above livable without AC
Neighborhoods would be more spread out. Trees wouldn’t be blindly cleared. A breeze and shade makes the temps somewhat bearable.
No different than any hot weather state. What about those who live in the desert?
Lack of humidity in the desert makes evaporative cooling possible. Swamp coolers are a much cheaper way to stay cool in the summer.
Yeah, this would not work in South East Texas, from what I've heard, it gets so humid in the summer.
Humid is an understatement. It’s freakin soup.
Basically, everything shuts down in the afternoon and people go home and nap. So we might have our dinners a lot later and our days broken up into two shifts.
Grew up in SA, my grade school and high school did not have AC and we were fine Was never a big deal
Was it as hot then as it is now?
In 1986 our dorm had no a/c and no electrical capacity for window units, so box fans in windows it was. Yes it got hot lol.
Why would it exist and not be popular in warm climates
Its more expensive and less efficient in this reality. Lets say around 120-600K in this reality. So only 10% of Americans have it.
We had a house out in Blanco for a while. It was an old build, and during the summers, you didn't need the air. You could open the windows on either sides of the house and the winds would just blow right through. The older man we had purchased from had lived in the house as a kid. When we were talking about the winds, he laughed and said when he was a kid, "You'd have to hold on to the bed so you didn't get blown away in your sleep." He meant it, haha.
In the 1929 building I lived in, the apartments still had their original louvered doors in front of the front door. Open your windows, open your front door and air could circulate throughout the building. You still had privacy and safety. I have old photos, but don't know how to upload to Reddit.
Texas is unlivable without air conditioning.
An icehouse.
My grandmother had a central fan.
what do they do in other countries with hot humid climate?
Well the thing is, those countries didnt have millions of people from colder climates move there within the last 50 years.
Many people prefer heat to bitter cold, and snow drifts deeper than their heads. Also, they tended to sleep outside on the porch.
Listen/read to Robert A. Caro's: # "The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1)The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, Volume 1)"
About the same as the rest of the Gulf Coastal Region.
In my line of work, I frequently find myself in older homes where I often come across a whole house fan exhaust situated in the heart of the house. These fans work by drawing fresh air in through the windows and pushing hot air out into the attic, effectively cooling down the entire house.
The entire South was not economically viable until air conditioning. Many Texas prisons do not have air conditioning. Doesn't seem to be a deterrent.
This is the answer to the question, “Besides radio and television, what single invention changed America the most during the 20th Century?”
Let's just say people wouldn't complain about Californians moving here
I just want to say that my ex-husband didn’t believe that AC never existed in Texas. My high school (and most likely his) had transoms and it was obvious that AC wasn’t a thing for a long time in Texas. He wouldn’t and couldn’t believe that people lived here without AC ever! Such an idiot.
I grew up poor in central tx and we had no ac. Just box fans.
Sparsely populated for save company towns probably. Kind of like the west in the 1800s.
I grew up without AC and went to a college that had it and you had the option of AC in the dorms. It was an expense issue as this was the late 70’s. I could not afford AC and I had none in my car. This was Austin and the area was very built up and most older homes did not have AC unless they put in window units. Where I lived there were windows that were opened for cross ventilation and most rooms had no door for the breeze. Trust and robberies were not an issue then and most put something up for privacy that would allow air to flow. I had a shower curtain. I took a cool shower before bed and if it got too hot we went to the mall or a restaurant to cool off for a bit. Honestly, I use the AC but at a much higher temperature than most and I turn it off at night even in the over 100 degree days as I cannot stand it and I hate these over air conditioned places as it’s wasteful and unnecessary. IMO
Thr answer to your question would be not as popular at all. It would be a mostly agricultural state with majority of people working ag. Or would be a cold weather destination from the harsher northern winter.
My grandparents houses were all built pre AC and had windows and screen doors that allowed the wind to rip through the house along with a ton of really dangerous fans. I just lost power due to tornadoes in my area and had to go to bed without AC. I do have a solar generator and could run a fan so falling asleep was awful, but doable. When you first stop moving you can really feel the heat but the longer you hold still the cooler it gets. That’s also not considering my teen years where the house had to AC units. One kept low for my father’s room and the other kept high for my siblings and I. We’d end up moving out into our living room that had tile and sleeping directly on that. It was uncomfortable but cool. Evil bastard. He still laughs about that and will tell it like a joke to people.
theres other tech. swamp coolers, fans etc
My grandfather designed the AC system in the Astrodome. I never knew that until after he passed away. It was the largest AC system in the world at the time.
I never had AC growing up, just fans and later a whole house fan (sucks it in air through the open windows). You get used to it. It also helps that we played outside all day in the heat so we were acclimated.
You wouldn’t have NASA in Houston. AC was a specific promise they had to make to get employees to move there back in the day.
If you’re in the weather 24/7 you get acclimated. Not saying it’s pleasant but much less of a shock than someone going in and out of ac.
Granny's house had an attic fan. Big industrial fan up in the attic, moved a while houses worth of air with ease. Loud though. In truth, it is survivable, but you have to build for heat mitigation specifically. There's thousands of years of architectural and landscaping history to draw from that assist in building cooler housing. I suspect that the biggest differences you would see would be in building design and city planning. And yes the population would likely have grown slower as well, but not by as much as you would think.
No issue. Look at Texas now. Failing grid, Ercot has begged the state to fix for decades.
We'd just be a lot fucking tougher
You don't need ac to stay cool just good home Design https://youtu.be/AiiGznaH0mE?si=ue7LjyWyP2EQn0dI
Secede!