Glorious São Paulo Winter

The first day of winter was last Saturday. And winter is, indeed, here in São Paulo.

There is a joke making the rounds here about how there is no such thing as global warming in South America. It's usually said with a dose of anger under the breath because folks down here may talk a good line about "loving" the cold weather of North America or Europe as tourists, but they loathe it when it affects their daily lives here.

Frankly, I don't see what the big deal is. I am not a big fan of New York winters. Or London or Paris for that matter. I mean, I'll tolerate them if it means paying a lot less for off-season tourism. But it's not like I jump up and down with glee at the idea of 25F and 20mph winds slicing through me at some East Side Manhattan intersection. Or that feeling of wet cold that gets into your bones when walking home from clubbing in the Marais.

São Paulo winters, on the other hand, are generally like Barbie Play Winters. They are definitely a change in the weather, and on rare occasions even chilly (it has gotten down to 6C one night here in the city so far this season). But they aren't real. It gets vaguely defined as the time when it stops raining and gets cold sometimes for a couple of days at night. For me, the best part of it is that we don't run the air conditioners in the apartment, and our electric bills are way down.

But of course the real reason behind it all is that Brazilians cling to the tropical climate as a sort of security blanket. They enjoy rebelling, and dashing off to the colder climes in order to sport their heavy imported coats (and the labels thereon), but in their everyday lives they want the usual heat.

I, on the other hand, do not. So I am always so happy this time of year, and my fellow paulistanos are usually walking around like they're on the verge of death. Part of the reason is because homes here, especially in apartment buildings, are built for the heat, not the chill. The are mostly concrete buildings (with all concrete interior walls), shaped to be long and narrow, with air shafts up the middle. They have no heating systems. So in the morning on a "cold" day, all the hard surfaces are cold -- the floor, the counter tops, the drawers, the tables, anything that isn't upholstered. And the buildings are designed to allow heat to more easily escape them, while cold concrete tends to radiate chill. Kinda like living inside a beer cooler.

Since I probably spent about $2,000 a year on air conditioning in my old Washington apartment, and find 60-65F more my liking as "room temperature", this is all delightful to me.

And on a conference call this morning with a client, a Brazilian colleague joked that global warming is really just a "rich country" problem in the North. She suggested we mount a campaign against "global cooling". I think she was only half joking.