The European opposition to air conditioning is bonkers to me. Thanks for calling attention to its inconsistency and actual human costs, Maarten.
As you know, I live in a Dutch Caribbean colony (*I know the Dutch hate that word, but honestly calling things what they are is a point of Dutch pride, so....). On our island--as is the case throughout the Caribbean--air conditioning gets installed pretty much as soon as a household can afford it. With increasingly efficient air conditioners, and increasingly efficient (and even carbon-friendly!) means of generating electricity, more and more Caribbean homes have benefited from air conditioning. It's awesome.
So, now that our Dutch overlords have wanted to impose more and more Dutch cultural values onto the Caribbean, what do you imagine has happened to support for air conditioning? Well, of course we get all sorts of lectures about caring for the environment and how air conditioning isn't necessary or healthy, and chatter about maybe artificially increasing the cost of electricity to reduce our use of air conditioning. At least so far there have not been efforts to make air conditioning illegal, the way it functionally is in Switzerland. I think if there were an attempt to illegalize air conditioning in the Dutch Caribbean, people would riot. And we'd have more mental energy to organize our rioting, since we'd get to rest in our air-conditioned bunkers between protests, rather than virtue signaling by staying in the sweltering heat.
Ha, this is delicious and infuriating in equal measure. Green colonialism at its worst! The nerve of lecturing people in the tropics on the moral superiority of sweating it out, from the comfort of a country where "hot" means 27°C for a few days in August (well except for this week). Thanks for sharing this, it's a perfect illustration of how a certain strain of European environmentalism mistakes its own protestant asceticism for a universal virtue.
British made it mandatory to wear tie and tuxedo type stuff in offices of india. Oh God it's a tropical country, let men wear lungi and women wear airy sarees.
And now this. Dutch forcing it's colonies (oops) to not use air conditioning.
So dutch don't use heating during winters? Or Europeans don't need gas in December?
I just bought a refurbished 12000 btu portable AC that draws 1200 watts for $250. I’ve never had it trip a breaker so I’m not sure what Euro plugs can handle but a 9000 btu would more than cool a bedroom and it would draw 900 watts.
Particularly strange in the case of France given their heavy use of nuclear generation for electricity....the anti-AC thing there seems like pure malevolence
A Seinfeld episode makes a big deal about getting AC. As someone that needs it at 68 to sleep when the highs in Texas are 100 degrees I could see why people would think it makes you weak.
I live in France and recently got into several facebook debates with people who oppose AC. The most common refrain was "AC is not a solution, it is part of the problem". Among the arguments are: they warm up the outside air so they make the problem worse, they are inegalitarian because they make things worse for the poor while the rich can insulate themselves, and the refrigerants are themselves greenhouse gases. It was frustrating wading through all of these smart-sounding, but horribly blinkered, comments. I had to reply that China, the Gulf States, the US, etc. dwarf Europe in emissions yet have zero qualms about equipping AC as soon as affordable - Europe is already ahead of the curve in climate policies, and Europeans are paying costs that no other people is paying. It's societal masochism.
I also found it effective to point out that in France the carbon footprint of an average year of AC usage is about 1/10 as large as the annual benefit of going vegetarian.
If you spend time here, it's challenging when you combine bureaucracy with poor appliance quality and lack of competent installers, let alone into buildings that are largely stone.
It’s even more incoherent because on hot sunny days we now produce so much solar energy that the price regularly turns negative by now. Even from a degrowth or environmental protection perspective, the cultural and policy resistance to A/C makes absolutely no sense, because A/C by now run on almost 100% carbon neutral energy, which would have put pressure on the electricity distribution network if not used by retail producers.
Exactly, and that's not even to mention France and its nuclear fleet. They really have no excuse, even on their own terms! The environmental case against A/C has collapsed, but the cultural reflex hasn't caught up.
Just require that EU offices and individual country white collar government office buildings are only allowed to have the same percentage of the building cooled as are the homes in the EU/country.
And the within-building AC percentage cooled must be inversely related to pay and status in the heirarchy.
If enforced, I suspect the percentage of AC across Europe would skyrocket…
Awesome proposal, and the inverse-status rule is the masterstroke. ;-) Sadly, reality is already running the opposite experiment. As Politico reported, the European Commission's Berlaymont HQ ordered to shut down A/C on floors 1 through 7. Pure coincidence, of course, that Ursula von der Leyen's office is on the 13th floor. The lowlifes swelter; the climate vanguard stays cool. Truly, they lead by example! https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-heatwave-hq-forced-shut-down-air-conditioning-europe/
It was 2003 - 23 years ago! - when over 70,000 Europeans died from heat. Did they build more climate-friendly nuclear and install lots of A/C? Nope, just the opposite
You may be amused to learn that, according to this energy "expert" from Leuven University, it's all "hindsight bias"! How could they possibly know that even more old people were going to die? It's only 23 years ago!
FYI you don't need to suffer with one of those old school loud mobile units. These days there are portable split ac units that are quieter and more efficient.
How about stuffing clothes into your freezer and cycling through them over the course of the day? It's like a portable A/C unit which saves energy by only cooling the area immediately around your body. I'm saving lives here, you know.
I live in Texas and am flabbergasted to discover that "Europeans don't have air conditioning," is true! I've always heard this, but I didn't really BELIEVE it. Amazing. And the idea that some of them have to get a doctor's note to get an a/c permit... unbelievable!!
Thank you for this very enlightening article. I just can't get over it...
I once rented an AirBnB in Paris with a lady from Texas. It was July, the rooftop apartment was on the 6th floor with no elevator, probably tucked under one of those famous French zinc roofs. When she discovered there was no A/C, just an old-fashioned fan in the closet, she went absolutely livid! Can't blame her.😅 I always feel embarrassed when I have to put my U.S. friends through this third-world shit.
Thank you for the reply. I feel kind of bad for laughing at that story, lol...
With the Fourth of July (and America's 250th birthday!) coming up, we are in the throes of our annual tradition of being buried under an avalanche of polling about how few Americans are proud to be an American. (We do this every Fourth of July in my country: "Fourth of July? Nobody's proud to be an American anymore!" Because nothing beats self-flagellation for celebrating one's Independence. Sigh.)
But since learning about the no a/c in Europe, it's all I can think about...
Proud to be an American? I have air conditioning in the summer, so yes.
Is Trump the worst president ever? I have air conditioning in the summer, so I don't care.
Are Mamdami-style socialists taking over America? I have air conditioning in the summer, so I don't care.
Oh! And we have Buc-ee's and brisket, too, so I'm feeling pretty good about everything no matter what the local naysayers throw at me. ;)
ETA: My attitude is undoubtedly shaped by living in an extremely hot part of the U.S. Back in the 1990s I traveled to Minnesota in July and found out shortly before my arrival that the lake cabin we would be staying in didn't have a/c. I panicked... But the temperatures were so mild up north, it turned out we didn't need a/c. At least, not during my trip.
I get your point. I live in India and here there is no policy abhorrence to A/C. Households are installing A/C as they can afford. But India still produces lot of its energy through coal. So I guess in this case, using air-conditioning is akin to worsen the problem that made one use A/C first, am I wrong? I understand that what caused heat days is beside the point you are making, but still at principal level, whatever the source of electricity, A/C will put inside hot air outside and thus will make outside hotter, stands true, right? We need to think about providing A/C while addressing this problem, like some centralized solutions to air conditioning which use these pumped outside heat (and humidity as well, though I am not sure) in better way.
Other point I wonder, again beside your core argument of A/C as a solution to which I completely agree, is excessive heat a relative phenomenon? Because India recently had almost a month of heatwave days, almost across half of its geography. A/C adoption is still low and nighttime heat was also unbearable. I wonder about mortality. Is adoption of excessive heat is relative to experience of usual temperatures or there is simply an undercounting here?
On coal: you're right that it's far worse than cleaner sources, but A/C remains a life-saver, so if I lived in India I wouldn't hesitate for a second. The emissions from cooling are real but not dramatic, and as countries get richer they tend to clean up their energy mix, see the Green Kuznets curve I posted about earlier: https://maartenboudry.substack.com/p/the-roots-of-green-misanthropy Refusing the life-saving technology now to avoid warming in the future is gets the priorities backwards.
On the waste-heat point: yes, A/C does dump heat outside, but the magnitude is tiny compared to the urban heat that's already there from the sun, buildings, and pavement. And the expelled hot air is rising quickly. It's a real effect at the dense-city scale, not a reason to forgo cooling. And centralized or district cooling, as you say, are ore efficient for handling rejected heat.
On your mortality question: I'm not an expert, but I suspect it's a mixture of objective physiology), ethnic background and acclimatization. Wet-bulb extremes and brutal nighttime lows are dangerous in absolute terms regardless of who you are and what you're used to.
The human body definitely adjusts to prolonged, seasonal heat exposure--to a degree. I know because I live in Texas where we have a lot of extreme summertime heat (typically 70-80 days over 95 degrees F in any given summer where I live, the threshold for "extreme heat" in the Climate Impact Lab map), and temperatures that feel uncomfortably warm to me going into summer, those same temperatures will feel uncomfortably cool to me going into fall (after being exposed to high heat all summer).
So I can definitely see how a body rarely exposed to triple digit temperatures would handle that worse than a body regularly exposed to extreme heat. All the more reason to have a/c to mitigate the extremes IMO.
En dan heb ik nog een reactie binnen, deze keer van het Klimaatteam van Stad Gent.
——
“Eerst en vooral wil ik aangeven dat het jammer is dat er ook hierover in het maatschappelijk debat gepolariseerd wordt gediscussieerd. Er zijn ondertussen in andere media veel genuanceerdere berichten verschenen, door mensen met meer kennis van zaken. Dhr Boudry is dat voor alle duidelijkheid niet en voert de discussie met andere (politieke) doelen dan een correcte informatie verschaffen. Dat terzijde.
Wij waarderen zeker uw signaal als bezorgde burger. Alleszins: Met de boodschap ‘vermijd airco’s’ wilden we aangeven dat er eerst andere en betere stappen kunnen worden genomen om de woning te koelen. Bomen, zonnewering, ventilatie, … dragen allemaal enorm bij tot een koelere woonomgeving.
Airco’s zijn dan de laatste stap als er dan nog een koelnood is. Op dat moment zal de koeling ook beperkter en energiezuiniger zijn. Win-win! Uiteraard zijn er gebouwen waar koeling absoluut wel gewenst is, zeker in zorgomgevingen.
We zien ook dat een goed gebruik van airco’s belangrijk is om efficiënt te zijn. In combinatie met zonnepanelen en dynamische energiecontracten zijn airco’s overdag zeker geen aanslag op het electricteitsnet en de factuur. Als iedereen ’s avonds na het werk tegelijk wil koelen wordt het net overbelast en stijgt de electriciteitsprijs enorm (voor iedereen). Dergelijke kennis is bij niet veel mensen aanwezig.
Mobiele airco’s worden ook vaak geplaatst met een raam of een deur op een kier, waardoor het nut soms bijna helemaal verdwijnt.
De Stad stimuleert ook de uitrol van warmtepompen. Deze kunnen in de zomer doorgaans ook efficiënt koelen.
Conclusie: Het voorzien van actieve koeling is genuanceerd en afhankelijk van geval tot geval en vereist een correcte aanpak. Airco’s zijn dan eerder de laatste stap om te overwegen. De stad is dus zeker niet in absolute zin tegen het voorzien van actieve koeling.
We hebben de webpagina ondertussen bijgewerkt met de boodschap dat er slim moet gekoeld worden.”
There are alternatives ta A/C: a well isolated building heated and cooled with earth warmth. I work in such a building and it's simply amazing. The same temperature inside year round. It requires a good ventilation system as there are no windows that can open in most rooms.
I very much agree Maarten, it is only applicable for newly constructed houses. I agree with you that a nan on air-conditioning is ridiculous. I always drive with the airco on in this heat.
An interesting component of it is drowning deaths. Europeans will try to cool off in pools and lakes but inexplicably don't know to keep their heads above water
Those 61,000 excess dead are "heat-related", i.e. the heat was considered a factor in their death because more people died than usual in a hot summer. This is mostly made up of people who were very vulnerable and the heat tipped them over, in the same way that winter influenza does. This "harvesting effect" means there are then subsequently fewer deaths in later months (in just the same way as a high flu mortality leads to fewer heat deaths the next summer). Obviously the sick and old dying in uncomfortable heat is a horrible way to go and we can and should do something about that, but the raw number can be very misleading.
The harvesting effect is real, but the 61,000 figure isn't a raw excess-death count. As I understand it, it's already a model-based attributable estimate using distributed lag methods. And that same PLOS study found 55% of years-of-life-lost was in people *under* 75. A substantial fraction of those deaths are genuine losses, not just days-to-weeks displacement. So the headline number probably overstates years-of-life-lost, but not massively so. The heat/flu symmetry is real but partial, not a wash.
Do you have any evidence that the cited study used a special different measurement of heat deaths exclusively for European nations? That strikes me as a highly unusual choice
I don't think that that's what I was claiming. You can read the paper yourself (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z) and see how they calculate it. When you say "heat deaths" people might think collapsing due to heat stroke, which is what it may be sometimes, but how it's actually calculated is they look at how many people usually die in the summer, then they look at the number of extra deaths in a hot summer, and then they work out how much of that is due to the temperature rise. It's not collated from coroner reports etc., they don't truly know the cause of death for any given person that makes up the mortality figure, it's a population-level calculation.
Het sterkste deel van dit stuk is de A/C-versus-verwarming-asymmetrie. Dat is een argument dat moeilijk te weerleggen is op zijn eigen termen: als CO2-uitstoot het enige punt was, zou niemand winterverwarming als zelfevident beschouwen en airco als luxe.
Dat dwingt tot een eerlijker gesprek over wat de echte bezwaren zijn - kosten, netcapaciteit, gewoonte, cultuur - in plaats van een morele framing die alleen op de ene vorm van energiegebruik wordt toegepast.
Het zwakkere punt zit in de causale sprong naar "secular penance" als verklaring voor heel Europa's beleid. Dat is een aantrekkelijke, polemische framing, maar het stuk levert weinig bewijs dat dit de werkelijke motivatie is bij beleidsmakers, in plaats van bijvoorbeeld netcapaciteitsproblemen, gebouwregelgeving die decennia geleden is vastgelegd voor andere doelen, of simpelweg trage institutionele aanpassing aan een veranderend klimaat. Een ideologische verklaring is dramatischer dan een bureaucratische, maar dat maakt haar niet automatisch waarder.
De Texas-Parijs-vergelijking is retorisch sterk maar verdient een kanttekening: het zegt iets over geïnstalleerde capaciteit, niet automatisch over wat de juiste beleidsrespons zou moeten zijn - die discussie blijft, terecht, voor mensen om zelf te wegen.
Bedankt voor deze doordachte reactie - je legt de vinger op een spanning die ik in het stuk zelf ook voelde maar niet helemaal heb opgelost.
Je hebt gelijk dat "secular penance" meer een polemische framing is dan een gedocumenteerde verklaring, en dat netcapaciteit, gebouwregelgeving en institutionele traagheid een veel groter deel van het verhaal verklaren. Maar ik denk wel dat er iets cultureels speelt dat puur bureaucratische verklaringen niet vangen - de actieve weerstand tegen airco in het Europese publieke discours (kijk naar de toon van krantenartikelen, of de manier waarop Zwitserse politici erover praten) gaat verder dan trage aanpassing. Mensen voelen dat het hoort, en dat is het soort gevoel dat een verklaring vraagt.
Over Texas-Parijs: eens, capaciteit is geen beleid. Maar het illustreert wel hoe ver het Overton-venster verschoven is - in Texas zou een politicus die airco wil ontmoedigen politieke zelfmoord plegen, terwijl het in Europa een respectabele positie is. Dat asymmetrische default verdient denk ik wel uitleg, ook al hoeft die uitleg geen voorschrift te zijn voor wat het beleid moet worden.
Het is beter dat je geen reactie plaatst, als je niet weet waarover je het hebt, of nog ergen, gewoon verondersteld. Als mijn reactie geschreven lijkt te zijn door een AI, dan neem ik dat als een compliment. Dank voor het compliment dus.
Dus omdat ik zinnen schrijf met een drieslag en een opbouw die ergens naartoe werkt, is dat voor jou bewijs van AI. Dat zegt iets over wat jij gewend bent te lezen, niet over hoe ik schrijf.
Als doordachte zinnen nu al verdacht zijn, ligt het probleem niet bij de zinnen.
Wil je dat ik er nog een scherpere of een kortere variant van maak?
"Deepity" is een goed woord, en ik snap de associatie, want sommige ChatGPT-teksten vallen letterlijk in die categorie. Holle diepgang die klinkt als inzicht maar bij nadere lezing nergens landt.
Maar dat is een stijlprobleem, niet een herkomstprobleem. Een mens kan exact dezelfde holle drieslag schrijven zonder ooit een chatbot te hebben aangeraakt.
Copywriters deden het al decennia voor AI bestond. Het verschil zit niet in wie de zin typte. Het zit in of er iets concreets achter staat, of alleen een vorm die diepte imiteert.
En ja, dat lange streepje - de beruchte em-dash - gebruik ik al jaren met liefde, lang voordat het verdacht werd. Blijkbaar is interpunctie nu ook AI-gevoelig. Volgende halte: de komma onder verdenking wegens overmatig gebruik in bijzinnen.
Dus: terechte kritiek op een veelvoorkomende stijl. Minder terecht als bewijs over de bron.
The European opposition to air conditioning is bonkers to me. Thanks for calling attention to its inconsistency and actual human costs, Maarten.
As you know, I live in a Dutch Caribbean colony (*I know the Dutch hate that word, but honestly calling things what they are is a point of Dutch pride, so....). On our island--as is the case throughout the Caribbean--air conditioning gets installed pretty much as soon as a household can afford it. With increasingly efficient air conditioners, and increasingly efficient (and even carbon-friendly!) means of generating electricity, more and more Caribbean homes have benefited from air conditioning. It's awesome.
So, now that our Dutch overlords have wanted to impose more and more Dutch cultural values onto the Caribbean, what do you imagine has happened to support for air conditioning? Well, of course we get all sorts of lectures about caring for the environment and how air conditioning isn't necessary or healthy, and chatter about maybe artificially increasing the cost of electricity to reduce our use of air conditioning. At least so far there have not been efforts to make air conditioning illegal, the way it functionally is in Switzerland. I think if there were an attempt to illegalize air conditioning in the Dutch Caribbean, people would riot. And we'd have more mental energy to organize our rioting, since we'd get to rest in our air-conditioned bunkers between protests, rather than virtue signaling by staying in the sweltering heat.
Ha, this is delicious and infuriating in equal measure. Green colonialism at its worst! The nerve of lecturing people in the tropics on the moral superiority of sweating it out, from the comfort of a country where "hot" means 27°C for a few days in August (well except for this week). Thanks for sharing this, it's a perfect illustration of how a certain strain of European environmentalism mistakes its own protestant asceticism for a universal virtue.
British made it mandatory to wear tie and tuxedo type stuff in offices of india. Oh God it's a tropical country, let men wear lungi and women wear airy sarees.
And now this. Dutch forcing it's colonies (oops) to not use air conditioning.
So dutch don't use heating during winters? Or Europeans don't need gas in December?
As an American, I was getting very Swiss-pilled until I learned about this A/C business.
I just bought a refurbished 12000 btu portable AC that draws 1200 watts for $250. I’ve never had it trip a breaker so I’m not sure what Euro plugs can handle but a 9000 btu would more than cool a bedroom and it would draw 900 watts.
Ironically, in France and other countries, the nuclear reactors had to be shut down, because the cooling water got to hot.
Particularly strange in the case of France given their heavy use of nuclear generation for electricity....the anti-AC thing there seems like pure malevolence
Yes, the French have absolutely zero excuses for forcing grandma in a furnace.
In France, the nuclear reactors had to be shut down because the cooling water got too hot!
A Seinfeld episode makes a big deal about getting AC. As someone that needs it at 68 to sleep when the highs in Texas are 100 degrees I could see why people would think it makes you weak.
I live in France and recently got into several facebook debates with people who oppose AC. The most common refrain was "AC is not a solution, it is part of the problem". Among the arguments are: they warm up the outside air so they make the problem worse, they are inegalitarian because they make things worse for the poor while the rich can insulate themselves, and the refrigerants are themselves greenhouse gases. It was frustrating wading through all of these smart-sounding, but horribly blinkered, comments. I had to reply that China, the Gulf States, the US, etc. dwarf Europe in emissions yet have zero qualms about equipping AC as soon as affordable - Europe is already ahead of the curve in climate policies, and Europeans are paying costs that no other people is paying. It's societal masochism.
I also found it effective to point out that in France the carbon footprint of an average year of AC usage is about 1/10 as large as the annual benefit of going vegetarian.
If you spend time here, it's challenging when you combine bureaucracy with poor appliance quality and lack of competent installers, let alone into buildings that are largely stone.
It’s even more incoherent because on hot sunny days we now produce so much solar energy that the price regularly turns negative by now. Even from a degrowth or environmental protection perspective, the cultural and policy resistance to A/C makes absolutely no sense, because A/C by now run on almost 100% carbon neutral energy, which would have put pressure on the electricity distribution network if not used by retail producers.
Exactly, and that's not even to mention France and its nuclear fleet. They really have no excuse, even on their own terms! The environmental case against A/C has collapsed, but the cultural reflex hasn't caught up.
May I offer a simple solution to the problem?
Just require that EU offices and individual country white collar government office buildings are only allowed to have the same percentage of the building cooled as are the homes in the EU/country.
And the within-building AC percentage cooled must be inversely related to pay and status in the heirarchy.
If enforced, I suspect the percentage of AC across Europe would skyrocket…
Awesome proposal, and the inverse-status rule is the masterstroke. ;-) Sadly, reality is already running the opposite experiment. As Politico reported, the European Commission's Berlaymont HQ ordered to shut down A/C on floors 1 through 7. Pure coincidence, of course, that Ursula von der Leyen's office is on the 13th floor. The lowlifes swelter; the climate vanguard stays cool. Truly, they lead by example! https://www.politico.eu/article/eu-commission-heatwave-hq-forced-shut-down-air-conditioning-europe/
I’m shocked - shocked! - to hear this.
Next you will tell me there is gambling in Casablanca…
😂
The answer in France is never layer on more bureaucracy, if you're trying to actually achieve anything.
I am the opposite of a proponent of more government.
But perhaps if you read Rob Henderson on “luxury beliefs”, you will understand why I made the specific proposal I did.
This is a fantastically important post.
It was 2003 - 23 years ago! - when over 70,000 Europeans died from heat. Did they build more climate-friendly nuclear and install lots of A/C? Nope, just the opposite
https://www.mattball.org/2022/10/environmentalists-are-literally-making.html
Thanks so much!
You may be amused to learn that, according to this energy "expert" from Leuven University, it's all "hindsight bias"! How could they possibly know that even more old people were going to die? It's only 23 years ago!
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/het-comfort-van-achterafgelijk-ruben-baetens-a6oqe/
Fun fact: his post was 100% AI-generated. I wonder how much cooling that required? ;-)
https://x.com/mboudry/status/2070066343013908877
FYI you don't need to suffer with one of those old school loud mobile units. These days there are portable split ac units that are quieter and more efficient.
Not a bad idea! Something like this? https://www.amazon.com.be/-/en/Portable-Conditioner-Structure-Smartphone-Connection/dp/B0H33M5WJ2/
But since we live in an apartment (12th floor), I'll probably still need permission from the co-owners before installing it.
Looks like a very small model useful for maybe cooling one room. I'm personally looking at picking up one of these https://nl.bauhaus/split-aircos/midea-split-airco-portasplit-12000-btu/p/31934233. But it's either sold out or double the normal price. 'Tis the season...
Inside unit in the living room, outside unit through the balcony door on my balcony. No drilling or anything.
Thanks a lot! It has the same cooling power (3500W) as my Whirlpool PAC212HP, but far more efficient! BTU per Watt: ~6.1 vs. ~2.6
Agree with the post but want to tell readers that there are pretty good portable units. Mine isn't even a split and works fine.
I haz one too! https://x.com/mboudry/status/2070166324177670453
How about stuffing clothes into your freezer and cycling through them over the course of the day? It's like a portable A/C unit which saves energy by only cooling the area immediately around your body. I'm saving lives here, you know.
I rub my bare chest with vanilla ice cream every morning. Saves on deodorant too!
Wait, you have a FREEZER?
I live in Texas and am flabbergasted to discover that "Europeans don't have air conditioning," is true! I've always heard this, but I didn't really BELIEVE it. Amazing. And the idea that some of them have to get a doctor's note to get an a/c permit... unbelievable!!
Thank you for this very enlightening article. I just can't get over it...
I once rented an AirBnB in Paris with a lady from Texas. It was July, the rooftop apartment was on the 6th floor with no elevator, probably tucked under one of those famous French zinc roofs. When she discovered there was no A/C, just an old-fashioned fan in the closet, she went absolutely livid! Can't blame her.😅 I always feel embarrassed when I have to put my U.S. friends through this third-world shit.
Thank you for the reply. I feel kind of bad for laughing at that story, lol...
With the Fourth of July (and America's 250th birthday!) coming up, we are in the throes of our annual tradition of being buried under an avalanche of polling about how few Americans are proud to be an American. (We do this every Fourth of July in my country: "Fourth of July? Nobody's proud to be an American anymore!" Because nothing beats self-flagellation for celebrating one's Independence. Sigh.)
But since learning about the no a/c in Europe, it's all I can think about...
Proud to be an American? I have air conditioning in the summer, so yes.
Is Trump the worst president ever? I have air conditioning in the summer, so I don't care.
Are Mamdami-style socialists taking over America? I have air conditioning in the summer, so I don't care.
Oh! And we have Buc-ee's and brisket, too, so I'm feeling pretty good about everything no matter what the local naysayers throw at me. ;)
ETA: My attitude is undoubtedly shaped by living in an extremely hot part of the U.S. Back in the 1990s I traveled to Minnesota in July and found out shortly before my arrival that the lake cabin we would be staying in didn't have a/c. I panicked... But the temperatures were so mild up north, it turned out we didn't need a/c. At least, not during my trip.
I get your point. I live in India and here there is no policy abhorrence to A/C. Households are installing A/C as they can afford. But India still produces lot of its energy through coal. So I guess in this case, using air-conditioning is akin to worsen the problem that made one use A/C first, am I wrong? I understand that what caused heat days is beside the point you are making, but still at principal level, whatever the source of electricity, A/C will put inside hot air outside and thus will make outside hotter, stands true, right? We need to think about providing A/C while addressing this problem, like some centralized solutions to air conditioning which use these pumped outside heat (and humidity as well, though I am not sure) in better way.
Other point I wonder, again beside your core argument of A/C as a solution to which I completely agree, is excessive heat a relative phenomenon? Because India recently had almost a month of heatwave days, almost across half of its geography. A/C adoption is still low and nighttime heat was also unbearable. I wonder about mortality. Is adoption of excessive heat is relative to experience of usual temperatures or there is simply an undercounting here?
Thank you for your piece.
Thanks, very good questions!
On coal: you're right that it's far worse than cleaner sources, but A/C remains a life-saver, so if I lived in India I wouldn't hesitate for a second. The emissions from cooling are real but not dramatic, and as countries get richer they tend to clean up their energy mix, see the Green Kuznets curve I posted about earlier: https://maartenboudry.substack.com/p/the-roots-of-green-misanthropy Refusing the life-saving technology now to avoid warming in the future is gets the priorities backwards.
On the waste-heat point: yes, A/C does dump heat outside, but the magnitude is tiny compared to the urban heat that's already there from the sun, buildings, and pavement. And the expelled hot air is rising quickly. It's a real effect at the dense-city scale, not a reason to forgo cooling. And centralized or district cooling, as you say, are ore efficient for handling rejected heat.
On your mortality question: I'm not an expert, but I suspect it's a mixture of objective physiology), ethnic background and acclimatization. Wet-bulb extremes and brutal nighttime lows are dangerous in absolute terms regardless of who you are and what you're used to.
The human body definitely adjusts to prolonged, seasonal heat exposure--to a degree. I know because I live in Texas where we have a lot of extreme summertime heat (typically 70-80 days over 95 degrees F in any given summer where I live, the threshold for "extreme heat" in the Climate Impact Lab map), and temperatures that feel uncomfortably warm to me going into summer, those same temperatures will feel uncomfortably cool to me going into fall (after being exposed to high heat all summer).
So I can definitely see how a body rarely exposed to triple digit temperatures would handle that worse than a body regularly exposed to extreme heat. All the more reason to have a/c to mitigate the extremes IMO.
"Quarks" (supposedly science mag on German public broadcast) today: https://www.instagram.com/p/DaCRvsWDYg_/?igsh=MWUxcXllZzdsdWp1cw== 🤦
OMG, I tweeted it!
Ik heb Stad Gent gecontacteerd en intussen werd de pagina lichtjes aangepast: ‘koel slim’ ipv ‘vermijd airco’s’. ‘t Is een begin :-) https://stad.gent/nl/huisplus/zomerse-temperaturen-zo-hou-je-je-huis-koel#koel-slim
En dan heb ik nog een reactie binnen, deze keer van het Klimaatteam van Stad Gent.
——
“Eerst en vooral wil ik aangeven dat het jammer is dat er ook hierover in het maatschappelijk debat gepolariseerd wordt gediscussieerd. Er zijn ondertussen in andere media veel genuanceerdere berichten verschenen, door mensen met meer kennis van zaken. Dhr Boudry is dat voor alle duidelijkheid niet en voert de discussie met andere (politieke) doelen dan een correcte informatie verschaffen. Dat terzijde.
https://www.nieuwsblad.be/binnenland/hittegolf-zwengelt-discussie-aan-moeten-we-allemaal-aan-de-airco/157718120.html
Wij waarderen zeker uw signaal als bezorgde burger. Alleszins: Met de boodschap ‘vermijd airco’s’ wilden we aangeven dat er eerst andere en betere stappen kunnen worden genomen om de woning te koelen. Bomen, zonnewering, ventilatie, … dragen allemaal enorm bij tot een koelere woonomgeving.
Airco’s zijn dan de laatste stap als er dan nog een koelnood is. Op dat moment zal de koeling ook beperkter en energiezuiniger zijn. Win-win! Uiteraard zijn er gebouwen waar koeling absoluut wel gewenst is, zeker in zorgomgevingen.
We zien ook dat een goed gebruik van airco’s belangrijk is om efficiënt te zijn. In combinatie met zonnepanelen en dynamische energiecontracten zijn airco’s overdag zeker geen aanslag op het electricteitsnet en de factuur. Als iedereen ’s avonds na het werk tegelijk wil koelen wordt het net overbelast en stijgt de electriciteitsprijs enorm (voor iedereen). Dergelijke kennis is bij niet veel mensen aanwezig.
Mobiele airco’s worden ook vaak geplaatst met een raam of een deur op een kier, waardoor het nut soms bijna helemaal verdwijnt.
De Stad stimuleert ook de uitrol van warmtepompen. Deze kunnen in de zomer doorgaans ook efficiënt koelen.
Conclusie: Het voorzien van actieve koeling is genuanceerd en afhankelijk van geval tot geval en vereist een correcte aanpak. Airco’s zijn dan eerder de laatste stap om te overwegen. De stad is dus zeker niet in absolute zin tegen het voorzien van actieve koeling.
We hebben de webpagina ondertussen bijgewerkt met de boodschap dat er slim moet gekoeld worden.”
OMG, dat kon ik niet laten liggen. ;-) https://x.com/mboudry/status/2070522911467639003
There are alternatives ta A/C: a well isolated building heated and cooled with earth warmth. I work in such a building and it's simply amazing. The same temperature inside year round. It requires a good ventilation system as there are no windows that can open in most rooms.
Sure, if you can afford it. But what about my 95-year-old grandma in her poorly insulated labourer's house?
I very much agree Maarten, it is only applicable for newly constructed houses. I agree with you that a nan on air-conditioning is ridiculous. I always drive with the airco on in this heat.
Why not both? Well isolated building is even better for A/C.
Yes. This type of building construction is often referred to as Passive House. Lot's of info online.
An interesting component of it is drowning deaths. Europeans will try to cool off in pools and lakes but inexplicably don't know to keep their heads above water
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/40-drowning-deaths-reported-france-europe-swelters-heat-wave/
Those 61,000 excess dead are "heat-related", i.e. the heat was considered a factor in their death because more people died than usual in a hot summer. This is mostly made up of people who were very vulnerable and the heat tipped them over, in the same way that winter influenza does. This "harvesting effect" means there are then subsequently fewer deaths in later months (in just the same way as a high flu mortality leads to fewer heat deaths the next summer). Obviously the sick and old dying in uncomfortable heat is a horrible way to go and we can and should do something about that, but the raw number can be very misleading.
See:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-024-53675-z
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18799511/
The harvesting effect is real, but the 61,000 figure isn't a raw excess-death count. As I understand it, it's already a model-based attributable estimate using distributed lag methods. And that same PLOS study found 55% of years-of-life-lost was in people *under* 75. A substantial fraction of those deaths are genuine losses, not just days-to-weeks displacement. So the headline number probably overstates years-of-life-lost, but not massively so. The heat/flu symmetry is real but partial, not a wash.
Do you have any evidence that the cited study used a special different measurement of heat deaths exclusively for European nations? That strikes me as a highly unusual choice
I don't think that that's what I was claiming. You can read the paper yourself (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-023-02419-z) and see how they calculate it. When you say "heat deaths" people might think collapsing due to heat stroke, which is what it may be sometimes, but how it's actually calculated is they look at how many people usually die in the summer, then they look at the number of extra deaths in a hot summer, and then they work out how much of that is due to the temperature rise. It's not collated from coroner reports etc., they don't truly know the cause of death for any given person that makes up the mortality figure, it's a population-level calculation.
Het sterkste deel van dit stuk is de A/C-versus-verwarming-asymmetrie. Dat is een argument dat moeilijk te weerleggen is op zijn eigen termen: als CO2-uitstoot het enige punt was, zou niemand winterverwarming als zelfevident beschouwen en airco als luxe.
Dat dwingt tot een eerlijker gesprek over wat de echte bezwaren zijn - kosten, netcapaciteit, gewoonte, cultuur - in plaats van een morele framing die alleen op de ene vorm van energiegebruik wordt toegepast.
Het zwakkere punt zit in de causale sprong naar "secular penance" als verklaring voor heel Europa's beleid. Dat is een aantrekkelijke, polemische framing, maar het stuk levert weinig bewijs dat dit de werkelijke motivatie is bij beleidsmakers, in plaats van bijvoorbeeld netcapaciteitsproblemen, gebouwregelgeving die decennia geleden is vastgelegd voor andere doelen, of simpelweg trage institutionele aanpassing aan een veranderend klimaat. Een ideologische verklaring is dramatischer dan een bureaucratische, maar dat maakt haar niet automatisch waarder.
De Texas-Parijs-vergelijking is retorisch sterk maar verdient een kanttekening: het zegt iets over geïnstalleerde capaciteit, niet automatisch over wat de juiste beleidsrespons zou moeten zijn - die discussie blijft, terecht, voor mensen om zelf te wegen.
Dank voor dit AI-commentaar. Gebruikte u Grok of Chat GPT? (is niet erg, maar gewoon erbij zetten dat u het gebruikt).
Bedankt voor deze doordachte reactie - je legt de vinger op een spanning die ik in het stuk zelf ook voelde maar niet helemaal heb opgelost.
Je hebt gelijk dat "secular penance" meer een polemische framing is dan een gedocumenteerde verklaring, en dat netcapaciteit, gebouwregelgeving en institutionele traagheid een veel groter deel van het verhaal verklaren. Maar ik denk wel dat er iets cultureels speelt dat puur bureaucratische verklaringen niet vangen - de actieve weerstand tegen airco in het Europese publieke discours (kijk naar de toon van krantenartikelen, of de manier waarop Zwitserse politici erover praten) gaat verder dan trage aanpassing. Mensen voelen dat het hoort, en dat is het soort gevoel dat een verklaring vraagt.
Over Texas-Parijs: eens, capaciteit is geen beleid. Maar het illustreert wel hoe ver het Overton-venster verschoven is - in Texas zou een politicus die airco wil ontmoedigen politieke zelfmoord plegen, terwijl het in Europa een respectabele positie is. Dat asymmetrische default verdient denk ik wel uitleg, ook al hoeft die uitleg geen voorschrift te zijn voor wat het beleid moet worden.
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Yup, dit is een AI-antwoord op AI-comment. ;-) https://www.pangram.com/history/821985f7-1923-47c4-a1aa-1a76921b960f
Het is beter dat je geen reactie plaatst, als je niet weet waarover je het hebt, of nog ergen, gewoon verondersteld. Als mijn reactie geschreven lijkt te zijn door een AI, dan neem ik dat als een compliment. Dank voor het compliment dus.
Dag Wim
1) je initiele reactie is niet van jou, maar van AI. Al die zinnetjes, de drieslag, inclusief streepje. Waarom lieg je? Is dit liegen fijn?
2) Het was niet bedoeld als compli, maar als aanval. Op jou.
3) Ik laat me door jou of een ander niet voorschrijven wanneer wel of niet te reageren. Met je walgelijke pseudo-neutraliteit 'Het is beter dat'
Ik weet wel waar ik het over heb en het is juist beter dat ik wel reageer. Dag Wim en ja, direct nu je zelf schrijft een spelfout...
Dus omdat ik zinnen schrijf met een drieslag en een opbouw die ergens naartoe werkt, is dat voor jou bewijs van AI. Dat zegt iets over wat jij gewend bent te lezen, niet over hoe ik schrijf.
Als doordachte zinnen nu al verdacht zijn, ligt het probleem niet bij de zinnen.
Wil je dat ik er nog een scherpere of een kortere variant van maak?
Humor. Ja, en graag met streepjes en die fijne uitsmijter: " wat begon als, leidde jaren later tot" .
'ergens naar toe'. Nou nee. Veel chat gpt-teksten zijn: deepity.
"Deepity" is een goed woord, en ik snap de associatie, want sommige ChatGPT-teksten vallen letterlijk in die categorie. Holle diepgang die klinkt als inzicht maar bij nadere lezing nergens landt.
Maar dat is een stijlprobleem, niet een herkomstprobleem. Een mens kan exact dezelfde holle drieslag schrijven zonder ooit een chatbot te hebben aangeraakt.
Copywriters deden het al decennia voor AI bestond. Het verschil zit niet in wie de zin typte. Het zit in of er iets concreets achter staat, of alleen een vorm die diepte imiteert.
En ja, dat lange streepje - de beruchte em-dash - gebruik ik al jaren met liefde, lang voordat het verdacht werd. Blijkbaar is interpunctie nu ook AI-gevoelig. Volgende halte: de komma onder verdenking wegens overmatig gebruik in bijzinnen.
Dus: terechte kritiek op een veelvoorkomende stijl. Minder terecht als bewijs over de bron.