Air conditioning only works for things inside of buildings. Not so good for the plants and animals our lives depend on.

And it raises the heat outside of buildings. Not so good for people who have to be outside, think first responders etc.

"just turn on the AC and keep burning the world down" isn't really the answer.

Absolutely this. Arrogance isn't going to hold against the sun. It's very stupid of EU to ignore the fact this is how hot it will be from now on, and 1000 year old dwellings using only windows to cool are no longer acceptable living standards.

I think it's more that air conditioning is (currently) prohibitively expensive. The few people I know that have it spent several thousands of euros on their installations. That's not something most people have lying around.

You'd think the government could subsidize aircon like they did solar for years, and both of those things combined would translate to very pleasant summers spent in energy neutral air conditioned homes.

Agree

Especially as air conditioning are heat pumps.

Would have helped solve the large dependency on natural gas heating for free as a byproduct!

I think there's a bit of a definitional skew happening here. The data isn't that good around this stuff.

Heat as the primary factor, vs heat related deaths is significant.

Heat is a system stressor. There's plenty of people having heart attacks and dying from weight related issues that probably got pushed over the edge by a hot day in Nevada that are missed in official stats.

Some buildings in Southern Europe have thick as hell walls which isolate from both heat and cold (the North can be really chilly near the Atlantic, and freezing away from the Mediterranean).

Had the US not used air conditioning so much we probably wouldn't have this heatwave right now.

Oh but what's the problem, just add more air conditioning! :facepalm:

Americans don’t get scolded enough for their abuse of AC. In terms of accounting for preventable waste of energy, US guzzles more electricity on cooling than most countries do on everything else.

I completely agree. Historically AC has not been necessary for the one to two days a year it was needed, but that world is gone now and the situation has changed and the widespread adoption of AC is now necessary.

Its going to be a huge challenge because the buildings are not designed with that in mind, many buildings are hundreds of years old making these sorts of renovations notoriously difficult and expensive, but it has to start because climate change is only going to get worse and worse.