I live up north where there are four distinct seasons every year, but hands down winter is always the most extreme. Even the most intense summer heat waves in this region have nothing on the sheer insanity of the cold snaps we get throughout January and February. I have a wood stove and find myself going through several cords of wood in the full winter season just to heat my small little house. That’s quite a large volume of wood to have piled in your garage for four months out of the year! This gets me through winter until the snow thaws and the sun intensity starts to rise as the sun’s rotational angle begins to shift again. Most of my friends and neighbors neglect to use air conditioning for most of the summer if at all possible. I choose to not do this because I’d rather spend a little extra on potentially needless energy costs in the summertime if it means preventing destructive mold growth in my home. But even if we all lived in a magical environment where fungal organisms somehow never existed, you still benefit from a central HVAC system in the quality of the air that you breathe into your lungs every second of every day. Your air conditioner filter alone catches a considerable amount of dust and pollen that would otherwise circulate in your air and collect in your lungs. Add-ons like air purifiers, dehumidifiers, and UV lights can all lead to even higher quality of air. There are few things I can think of that are more important to our survival than the air that we breathe, so we owe it to ourselves to do what we can to maintain clean indoor air.