If the Western world developed a climate like Thailand's over the next few decades, we wouldn't be able to adapt and live and work with the climate in the way that they do. We'd hide inside in air conned offices and shops and houses, air conned SUVs, and continue to deny the need for a change in lifestyle.  It made me wonder if poverty forces people to adapt in this way though.

I've often thought the same thing when I've looked around me here, where I see both people who are forced to deal with the climate as it is, and people who have the (dangerous) luxury of denying it through air conditioned rooms and cars.  There almost seems to be a pathology about air conditioning -- rich and upper-class people want to make their surroundings not just comfortable but cold, which I suspect is a subconscious (or not-so-subconscious) effort to reinforce the idea that they can afford to "escape" the climate.