With temperatures soaring and heat deaths mounting, air conditioning is increasingly essential—not a moral failure, not a symbol of identity, but a technology that can keep people alive when extreme heat hits.
Last week, as temperatures pushed past 100°F in cities across Europe, it became hard to tell what was doing more work—the weather itself, or the argument about how people should endure it.
On this side of the Atlantic, the answer has often been obvious: air conditioning. Around 90 percent of U.S. households have it, compared with about 20 percent of European households. Even in Europe. where the costs can be justified for essential services. public buildings—including schools and hospitals—often do without air conditioning.
That absence isn’t framed here as a matter of affordability. The dispute is cultural and political. Many Europeans associate air conditioning with something inherently wrong. an example of “climatisation.” A widely cited critique comes from far-left French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon. who called air conditioning “maladaptation. ” describing it as “a false solution that makes the problem worse.” Instead. heat advisories and everyday guidance often point people toward adaptation steps like closing shutters and blinds during the day. staying in the shade. drinking plenty of water. and planting trees—without much mention of air conditioning.
The problem is that the consequences of that debate aren’t abstract. Europe has more heat deaths per capita than any other continent. In 2022 alone, more than 61,000 Europeans died from heat-related causes. Early estimates for France’s heat wave last week suggest there were at least 1. 000 excess deaths during the three worst days. with mortuary owners overwhelmed enough to turn away family members who had lost loved ones to the heat.
And the forecast is grim. Europe is already the fastest-warming continent in the world. warming at roughly twice the rate of the global average since the 1980s. More than two-thirds of Europe’s most severe heat waves since 1950 have occurred since 2000. By 2050, about half of the continent’s population could face high or very high heat-stress risk every summer.
The most striking part may be how little time people have to argue before the physics arrives. Even though Europe has taken climate change seriously, the next 20-plus years of warming are largely locked in. Europe can’t mitigate its way out of stronger heat waves on its own; it has to adapt—and adaptation. in practice. means air conditioning.
There is no technology described as more effective at turning a deadly heat wave into something survivable. The argument here isn’t that air conditioning is morally pure or politically uncontroversial; it’s that it is a normal technology—like a refrigerator or furnace—capable of doing a useful job at a manageable cost. In a world that is only going to get hotter, it becomes a lifesaving one.
The case for effectiveness is drawn from evidence that tracks changes over time. In a landmark study following US mortality across the entire century. economist Alan Barreca and colleagues found that the chance of dying on an extremely hot day fell by about 80 percent from the years in the 1900-to-1959 period to the decades that followed. Days above 90°F once produced mass-casualty outcomes; by the back half of the 20th century. they were responsible for roughly 600 deaths a year. down from the 3. 600 that would have died if heat remained as lethal as it was before home air conditioning spread.
That decline is linked to when home air conditioning became common. The study found that almost none of the reduction began before 1960. the exact moment home air conditioning started its march across the country. Globally. the Lancet Countdown estimated that in 2019 air conditioning averted 195. 000 heat-related deaths among people over 65. who are described as most vulnerable to heat.
Still, the hardest objection centers on carbon. Air conditioning runs on electricity, and more cooling could increase emissions depending on what powers the grid. More air conditioning can add to climate change if the electricity is generated from dirtier sources. and that is the maladaptation frame used by critics.
But the piece points to a broader energy reality: space cooling accounts for just 0.8 percent of the energy EU households consume. compared with 77 percent for heating. Cooling is smaller than heating at a ratio of nearly 100 to 1. and outside special situations like the 2022-23 Ukraine-related energy crisis. calls to cap winter thermostat levels or condemn radiators as decadent are rarely part of public debate.
Even when future expansion is modeled, the projected emissions impact is described as small. A 2023 paper cited here estimates that if Europe doubled air conditioning to 40 percent of households by 2050. the added carbon would represent just three-tenths of one percent of the region’s current emissions. At levels comparable to the US or Japan, the effect on emissions is described as still fairly low.
The implementation challenges are real, but the argument is that they are solvable. Window units are difficult to install in many European cities because well-sealed windows are common outside the south. Yet, the grid decarbonization that Europe pursued was also complex. The piece says renewables now generate nearly half of EU electricity. and the bloc has committed to cutting emissions 90 percent relative to 1990 levels by 2040.
Another counterargument is that air conditioners don’t destroy heat—they move it. pumping it out of buildings and into the street. In dense cities, the effect can intensify. Hans-Martin Füssel of the European Environment Agency told the CBC that dense-city air conditioning “can create an even stronger urban heat island effect. ” thanks to trapped warmth that already makes cities hotter than the surrounding countryside.
The response offered is not to leave people sweating in darkened 95°F bedrooms. It’s to use more efficient cooling options that vent less waste heat. The piece describes the “worst AC option” as the wheezing single-hose portable unit wedged into a window. which creates a vacuum that sucks hot air back in through every crack even as it struggles to cool indoor spaces.
And that’s where the real-world barrier reappears: the better option may require landlord permission, a costly renovation, or something as specific as a Genevan doctor’s note—making the least effective machine the path of least resistance.
The same theme plays out in the U.S., but with a different cultural trap. America is described as treating cooling as a birthright—too often used everywhere, all the time, without planning. The piece imagines scenarios like an office tower kept so cold that workers bring sweaters in the summer. or a grocery store with doors propped open onto the city street. hemorrhaging cold air.
With a major heat dome bearing down on the eastern half of the country this week. the largest grid operator in North America. PJM. is forecasting a possible all-time record of more than 166. 000 megawatts of demand. The increase is described as driven largely by air conditioning. PJM’s warning is that blackouts grow more likely as the system strains.
Here, the argument is that the problem isn’t moral. It’s engineering—solved through planning and investment rather than shame. The piece says the approach should resemble Europe’s planning for electricity demand from the electric cars and heat pumps it wants.
Under that view. air conditioning can be deployed where it does the most good instead of everywhere by default: installed first in care homes. hospital wards. and top-floor apartments where heat kills. paired with shutters and shade trees and white roofs Europe is described as loving for their cooling effect. The heat pump is treated as a key bridge between winter heating and summer cooling. described as an air conditioner that runs in both directions. cooling in summer and heating in winter more efficiently than the boiler it replaces.
Even so, the piece warns that the culture war might be shifting. Evidence is described as emerging that European opposition to air conditioning is breaking down. and Asian makers of air conditioners are enjoying a boom in European sales. But it’s paired with a new risk: the air conditioning argument could become internal to Europe.
In France, the loudest champion of cooling is described as the far right’s Marine Le Pen. Her campaign is said to include a “grand plan” for air conditioning while accusing the left of letting people die for green pieties. The hard-left, the piece says, has dug in the other way.
A common window unit, in this telling, becomes a marker of identity instead of a machine that moves heat around. The piece calls that trap exactly what happens when a technology turns into a symbol instead of a tool: it gets embraced or condemned rather than evaluated on cost. who it saves. and how it can be run cleanly. That symbolism. it argues. is how Europe ended up rationing the most effective heat-protection machine ever invented in the first place—and how. if cooling gets coded as right-wing. the same mistake could run in reverse.
Heat itself doesn’t take sides. The piece returns to what’s at stake for real people: the grandmother broiling on the top floor in Paris. the dazed schoolchild in a classroom with no relief. and the harried nurse on a ward where machines fail in the heat. They aren’t waiting for a political judgment on air conditioning.
They need cooling to be normal.
air conditioning extreme heat heat deaths Europe United States PJM heat wave climate adaptation energy demand heat pumps