I hate to say it but AC always felt like thoughtless engineering and consumerism, especially the electric varieties. It's ironic that in a sunny, energy rich environment, you spend extra energy on a heat pump. In a lot of environments some better architecture will take care of the problem via passive methods, additionally evaporative methods work pretty well in dry environments and polute considerably less ? Failing that, hell atleast use some solar energy to run the heat pumps locally, atleast stop burning stuff to power them.

Failing all of the above, stoicism isn't that bad, honest, neither are life style changes that shift high activity periods to later in the day, they are widely practised in Mediterranean countries.