Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

huntertwo

Oh no you’re gonna trigger the Germans.

the_mitsuhiko

> Several countries require AC installation to be approved by the equivalent of a homeowners association or impose noise ordinances that increase compliance costs and paperwork. This is not unique to ACs. Anything on the outside of a building requires your co-owners to agree.

deanc

We have those stupid regulations in Finland about how the outside of our apartments buildings should look - meaning you cannot put the condenser visibly on the outside of the building. I've heard stories of residents being scalded for putting flowers on their balcony railings that face outwards as it ruins the "look". Given almost all apartment buildings are built consistently between every floor they could ensure consistent placement of condensers across all floors and it wouldn't even look that bad. What makes the situation much worse here is we have insanely good insulation on the buildings. They trap heat for the cold winters, but the walls just maintain all the heat during the summers. A new approach is needed to make it livable here. In my own apartment I am not able to create a cross-breeze through strategic window opening to try and bring in cooler air from outside, so I've resorted to opening a window on one side of the apartment and using a Vornado fan to push air out the window on another side of the apartment - creating a pressurized system.

mr_mitm

> Germany has reported more than 5,000 excess deaths this year. We're up to more than 15,000: https://www.rki.de/DE/Themen/Gesundheit-und-Gesellschaft/Ges...

FartyMcFarter

I don't necessarily disagree, but I am wondering what luxury will next become a necessity if we keep increasing our energy usage in order to get both more luxuries and necessities? On the bright side, I suppose one mitigating factor is that renewable energy makes it less harmful to use energy to power A/C usage.

Arodex

First words from the article: >Yet as heat waves kill tens of thousands of Europeans each year ...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett? Last words from the article: >But forgoing air conditioning is a refusal to move on from a lethally hot past. Gee, I wonder if this global warming thing wasn't a mistake to let happen... If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming? Because that includes a lot of her colleagues at Cato and WaPo. The same who were against the same carbon taxes that would be useful to reduce and mitigate the global warming that kills...

elil17

Cooling technologies are a necessity and air conditioning is one of many possible options. Europe north of France is substantially cooler than much of the US, even on the hottest days. Many homes could get by on ceiling fans, but they are very uncommon here.

markus_zhang

We have similar rules for condos in Canada, so we used a portable one back when we owned a condo. It’s also kinda expensive to install one, too.

ThePhysicist

I mean it's mostly about energy efficiency, a well insulated house is as easy to cool in summer as it is to heat in winter. Most heat pumps can also cool and new construction in most European countries like Germany is equipped with floor heating and central ventilation which in summer allows you to run around 18 degree Celsius hot water through the system to cool it, that yields around 20-40 Watt of cooling power per square meter, and that's often sufficient to keep things chilly. Mind you not American style 18 degree Celsius kind of chilly, but 20-25 degrees easily, which I think is quite nice. The bonus of this system is that it's mostly "radiative" cooling as the cold surface acts as an absorber of infrared radiation, I find it much more pleasant than having cold air blown into your face. We equipped our founding era building with wall heating and will test out the heatpump based cooling next summer, if it's not enough I would consider installing a small AC unit, that's super easy as well. Don't know what the article wants to say, there's no ban on AC anywhere in Europe and small units are quite affordable, you can get a single split unit from Mitsubishi for 500 € from Italy. The only nuisance is that installation is heavily regulated in Germany so they rip you off with insane cost. That's definitely a thing that needs to change in my opinion.

mmsc

Thats what I tell to all the wildlife when they collapse, too.

danek_szy

> HumanProgress.org is a project of the Cato Institute with major support from the John Templeton Foundation and the Searle Freedom Trust [1] > The Cato Institute is an American libertarian think tank headquartered in Washington, D.C. [2] It's nothing more than US libertarian think tank trying to influence EU policy... Perhaps in an effort to push more anti climate change agenda/discourse in US (but that might be just my projection). Thank you, case closed. [1] https://humanprogress.org/about/ [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cato_Institute

hagfjall

Sweden has a 'district cooling' as well as district heating. 2 completely different systems ofcourse. The district cooling is a centralized way of providing cold air/liquid to building and facilities across the city. The centralized producer of the cold stuff, they can also create the chilly stuff by utilizing waste heat from factories, large buildings etc. Pretty neat idea IMO, and something that ideally would be in priority instead of letting each building have their own AC and create a lot of noise. Source: https://www.goteborgenergi.se/foretag/fjarrkyla

probably_wrong

I'm not convinced by the author's point that ACs do not impose a burden on the electrical grid. They write that ACs have gotten more efficient, which may be true, but that's the same Windows developers have been saying over years and yet boot times and hardware requirements have gone way up. One million efficient units still require more energy than no units. And while I definitely believe that European hospitals and retirement homes sadly need ACs now (thanks global warming), I'm not sure everyone and their dog needs one. I also have reservations about why an American libertarian think tank writes about what Europeans should do, but that's probably on me.

collinmcnulty

A total ban is nonsensical. If you’re concerned about noise regulate the sound level. If you’re concerned about energy use, tax it and put the money raised into a solar subsidy. But the idea you can have a heat pump and can’t have an AC is absurd because a heat pump literally is an AC flipped around.

38384848b

idk fam I live in mauritania and we just tough it out

t0mislav

Luckily, we in Croatia have ACs, a lot.

andunie

What temperatures are we talking about here? Aren't people living in much higher temperatures in tropical zones just fine?

ricardobayes

I tend to stay away from topics like this which generalize and basically tell a whole continent they are living their lives "wrongly". But I have to say, AC is not "banned" anywhere in Europe, apart from certain cantons of Switzerland. In Germany you have a right to AC actually, if your community votes to "veto" the installation a court can overturn that.

TrackerFF

Here in Norway AC is not the standard in hotel rooms. For 80% of the year, that's OK - but it can become pretty uncomfortable if you're booking anytime between mid-June and mid-August. The standard here are heat pumps, at least for residential housing. It is really only a problem if you live in blocks or apartment buildings that are housing associations, with strict rules regarding how such heat pumps should be installed. With that said, for my travel to Europe - especially down south, AC in the hotel room is an absolute necessity. A couple of years ago we ended up in a completely booked hotel in Italy (mid July), where the AC in our room was busted - it was beyond miserable. Ended up changing hotels after one night.

beardyw

"This article was originally published in The Washington Post" Pretty much all you need to know in 2026.