Americans, spare Europe your hot takes about the heat wave.

It’s hot.

Legitimately hot, by the way (currently 40C – 100.4 Fahrenheit at 2 p.m. on a Sunday). The hottest June temperature that Berlin has seen in more than 100 years.

And I am tired.

Everytime I check the news or log on to social media, there’s another post from an obnoxious American tourist lamenting Europe’s “cultural aversion” to air conditioning.

Or, worse, people from historically warm states like Florida and Texas – places now rapidly being rendered uninhabitable thanks to climate change – offering ‘tips’ for the dim Old Worlders too stubborn or backward to just get the A/C.

Even posts like this one, from a Tiktoker I generally like, and who was obviously trying to be sympathetic, just come off as ignorant and condescending. ‘They don’t even have ceiling fans here, you guys!’

And she was in Scotland, which has been spared the highest temperatures (though they are still much higher than normal).

Talk to us about how it’s “not really that hot” when you’re in France or Germany or Poland and its a 104 Fahrenheit with no air conditioning.

Here’s the thing.

Europeans are not ‘culturally averse’ to A/C

They haven’t needed it because for the vast majority of their lifetimes, it is usually only very hot for a few days or a week every couple of years. Their homes have normally been constructed to deal with the extreme cold that is the norm in their rather far north latitude.

Homes there are built to retain heat in the winter because it is often cold to very cold for seven to nine months of the year. Three years ago, my mother traveled to Scotland in June and had to buy a winter coat! That is a typical Scotland June.

Farther south, in France and Italy, where it has historically been temperate for most of the year – it was simply more cost effective and practical to use natural air circulation and modified schedules to deal with the infrequent extremely hot weather.

Installing things like permanently wired ceiling fans or buying a portable A/C unit costs money and uses a lot of electricity – which is also not cheap.

Of course, if you’re an American doctor from Florida who can afford to rebuild her house that has flooded three times in five years and still afford international vacations, it probably seems like a no-brainer: At least get some fans in doors!

But for most of the planet, it isn’t so simple.

Here in northern Germany, we are fortunate to live in an apartment building that is very well insulated, with triple pane windows and exterior metal shutters that can be raised and lowered.

We have, so far, been able to stay cool using the traditional German methods of opening the windows late at night and then closing them after the sun is up, plus lowering the shutters to keep out the sunlight in the heat of the day.

We do have portable fans to circulate the air that we store in the cellar for most of the year. We use those judiciously, because even an electric portable fan can add heat to the room you are trying to keep cool.

We also limit outdoor activity to the cooler hours of the day and try to avoid using the stove or other large appliances that add heat to the apartment.

Using a portable air conditioning unit is an expense that isn’t worth it, if you can stay comfortable and safe without it.

Here’s the other thing:

Air conditioning intensifies and worsens climate change

‘Space cooling,’ mostly the use of air conditioners, but also electric fans, accounts for between 7.5 and 8 percent of global electricity use. Because most electricity is produced through the burning of fossil fuels, this means air conditioning is responsible for pumping around one billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere annually.

Additionally, older and poorly maintained AC systems may leak chemical refrigerants into the air. These refrigerants contain industrial hydroflurocarbons (HFC) which trap heat much more efficiently than carbon dioxide alone. It is estimated that HFC emissions contribute the equivalent of around 720 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere each year.

Air Conditioning Poses a Climate Conundrum

And, as rising temperatures become a problem, demand for air conditioning systems is rising. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA) the number of air conditioning units in operation has tripled since the year 2000.

If all of the regions that previously could not afford to adopt mechanical air conditioning choose to adopt it, A/C use by itself could lead to an additional 0.5 to 1 degree increase in global temperatures, continuing to worsen the problem.

“As global temperatures rise, we risk being locked into an ‘arms race’ where defending ourselves against extreme heat is causing the issue to get worse,” Yuli Shan, professor at the University of Birmingham who studies climate change and sustainable transitions, told Time magazine last February. “The world must transition quickly to cleaner, more efficient cooling technologies—while ensuring fair access to cooling, especially for vulnerable populations.”

U.S. and China are major polluters

The United States has the highest rates of air conditioning use in the world, with almost 90 percent of buildings having some for of A/C. It is also one of the world’s leading greenhouse gas emitters, second only to China.

What’s more, U.S. President Donald Trump withdrew the States from the Paris Agreement, a multinational climate treaty setting annual targets for limiting greenhouse gas emissions.

As a leading polluter, the failure of the United States to abide by the treaty leaves the rest of the world struggling to address the effects of climate change, while still doing their part to limit their own emissions, even when it seems like a futile effort.

That is why it is particularly galling to see Americans confidently bleating on about how Europeans just need to get on the A/C bandwagon.

It’s a bit like coming here and shouting, ‘Hello, rest of the world! Now that we have shit the bed, listen to us on how to comfortably sleep in a shitty bed!’

Hmmmm, I’ll pass.

Europe looks for comprehensive, more sustainable solutions

So, no, the answer is not for Europe to just ‘get over’ the aversion to air conditioning. But they are not just being stubborn.

They have seen the American approach – basically, decide you ‘don’t believe in climate change ‘and elect a science denying narcicisstic grifter who will tell you everything’s fine, and maybe you should even burn more coal.

We know that isn’t working.

Yes, we are at the point, climate-wise, where some adoption of air conditioning is a necessity. But it shouldn’t be an individidualistic approach of: ‘Whoever has enough money, retrofit your individual home or business while making the problem worse for others.’

Fortunately, I see many European cities adopting more holistic, sustainable, and cost-effective approaches.

These include:

• Encouraging use of more climate-friendly air conditioning technologies;
• Adopting more resilient building standards that require the use of things like better insulation, double- and triple-glazed windows, and passive cooling designs;
• Designation of neighborhood and city cooling shelters that allow people to share climate-controlled spaces when they need them, limiting the need for more damaging individualized use of A/C.
• Urban planning that encourages the planting of street trees and development of greenspaces to lesson the urban heat island effect;
• Transit intiatives that promote walkable neighborhoods, and encourage walking, biking and the use of mass transit as opposed to dependence on cars.

Europeans aren’t sitting around blindly trying to live in the last century. They know about air conditioning. They know that ceiling fans exist. And, they know that some form of widespead space cooling is now needed for much of their continent. But they want to see it done in a way that doesn’t just put a short-term bandage on the problem and shove the consequences off for later.

Americans and the United States clearly aren’t leading these efforts. Most of them are in denial of both their existence and even the pressing need for new solutions.

And, many Americans’ assumption that they have the answers – when they absolutely do not – is as sad as it is galling, because it is their communities that will mostly be left behind because of it.

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Featured image: Europe is in the middle of a heatwave, with record air temperatures for May in many countries making it feeling more like the height of summer, rather than late spring. Image credit: European Space Agency, with data from Copernicus-Sentinel 3.

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What Else I’m Working On …

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What I’m Reading

Italy with Antonio: Italy is Inconvenient, and that’s OK.

“So yes, Italy is inconvenient. You’ll walk when you’d rather ride, pray for sunshine to dry your clothes, sweat in buildings without air conditioning, and be forced to dine out late because no reputable restaurant will serve you dinner at 6 pm. The inconvenience is real.

But this type of inconvenience is an honest bill paid up front. North America takes a different approach. It mails you the charges later, with interest, to your knees, your blood pressure, and eventually the realization that most people on your street don’t know your name.”

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Will Lockett: The AI Industry is Panicking

“Even if AI could be improved to the point where it can actually complete tasks effectively, it won’t replace human workers, because it costs more than they do. This is why every AI CEO has suddenly U-turned on their crass, degrading and aggressive jobpocalypse narrative, because you can’t go around saying your AI is going to take people’s jobs if the AI costs significantly more than the workers — it makes you look like a total idiot. But this begs the question: where are these companies going to get those hundreds of billions of dollars to pay their debt?”

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Ed Zitron: Revenge of the Business Idiot

“The aggression with which AI boosters and executives act toward those who aren’t impressed suggests a genuine intellectual and moral weakness. Nobody who’s this insistent, aggressive and violative with their language of “it’s here and if you don’t adopt it you’re stupid and dead” has ever been right about anything. Nobody this desperate, insistent and forceful has ever had good intentions, good vibes or brought good omens — they are always bearers of some kind of con.” 

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