Making Climate in 19th-Century America

This paper reflects broadly on the development of ice as a commodity in nineteenth-century life in the United States and the implications of this development, both historically and presently. Based in large part on my book project, I explore the emergence of commoditization of ice in the early nineteenth century in maritime trade, and from there as ice developed into an inexpensive source of refrigeration that served as building blocks of American capitalism. By the end of the nineteenth century, American life was deeply dependent on commoditized ice from cradle (milk, food) to grave (meat and the growing uses of ice in the death industry) and beyond.

Commoditizing ice was part of a larger series of efforts to control temperature and climate. This effort pervaded all parts of the economy and consumer culture. Ice became a consumer good, but also became a good that created preservation environments for a wide range of products. Channels of refrigeration and cold in turn became the channels of capital expansion, exchange, and consumption. These initial efforts to control climate and temperature involved extracting ice from ponds and rivers. But, over time, a personal and industrial thirst for cold and coolness turned from harvested ice blocks to artificially produced ice and cold. Refrigeration (both in homes and in the vast “cold chain”) and air conditioning—two outgrowths of “cold capitalism” of the nineteenth century—became behemoth sources of carbon emissions. Today, air conditioning and refrigeration account for about 25 percent of American home energy use today—to say nothing of the vast commercial and industrial refrigeration and air conditioning systems that undergird systems of production, distribution, and consumption. We are still living in an “ice age” of sorts, even as that ice age contributes importantly (and dangerously) to rising global average temperatures.