Fenix Ammunition on X - "You are 8.5X more likely to die in Europe due to their lack of air conditioning than you are to be killed in the United States by someone with a gun. Just let that settle in your brain for a moment."
Britain and Europe need to get serious about air conditioning - "When the late Singaporean premier Lee Kuan Yew was asked for the secret of his nation’s rapid rise from doldrums to dynamism during the second half of the 20th century, he had two answers. First: multi-ethnic tolerance in a diverse society. Second: air conditioning. Lee, who prioritised the installation of air conditioners in government offices when he came to power in 1959, hailed the technology as “one of the signal inventions of history”, and key to increasing the efficiency of Singapore’s civil service. While the precise contribution of air conditioning to the Singaporean miracle is hard to quantify, there is no question that the ability to keep cool in hot climates is enormously valuable. Once indoor temperatures rise above the low-twenties centigrade, or around 75 Fahrenheit, humans start to suffer. Sleep duration and quality fall rapidly when temperatures rise above 23C. Cognitive performance fares similarly, with scores in US high school tests dipping on hot days, and the affected students suffering a lasting impact on their prospects of graduation. The same is true of office workers’ productivity, which peaks at around 21C and rapidly deteriorates as the mercury rises. And that’s all before we get on to mortality, where death rates climb steeply once temperatures hit 30C. The key word here is indoor. All of these bleak outcomes can be avoided if the interiors of homes, schools and offices can be kept at a comfortable temperature even as the sun beats down outside. And while careful building design, passive cooling and other adaptations can offer some protection, once temperatures get high enough, only air conditioning can make a real difference. As a result, with heatwaves rapidly increasing in frequency around the world, the wide US-Europe disparity in air conditioning use is becoming reflected in a startlingly wide disparity in heat-related deaths. Between 2000 and 2019, an average of 83,000 western Europeans lost their lives every year as a result of extreme heat, compared with 20,000 North Americans. Yet despite the rising human toll, air conditioning remains widely frowned upon in the UK and Europe, with consistent and concerted pushback from those who consider the technology an unnecessary extravagance — and one that does more harm than good... But two key parts of the calculus here are changing rapidly. The first is the extent to which air conditioning is necessary. European cities are enduring more intense heat, more frequently and for longer periods than just a decade or two ago... And the second shift is that rising demand for air conditioning now aligns with rapidly rising supply of solar energy... the potential for air-to-air heat pumps to take care of all of a building’s temperature needs without burning gas (these are models that can both cool and heat) means the net impact on emissions could be negative. Far from encouraging this, regulations in countries including the UK and France continue to disincentivise and even restrict these technologies. Meanwhile, others argue against their adoption on the basis that it will widen health and other inequalities. The reverse is true. Unless authorities begin to treat the need for sufficient cooling as seriously as the need for adequate heating, and fulfil their duty to protect the most vulnerable, inequalities will widen as high-income households fork out for their own protection and leave the rest sweating."
As Europe’s Heat Waves Intensify, France Bickers About Air-Conditioning - The New York Times - "Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader in France, declared that she would deploy a “major air-conditioning equipment plan” around the country if her nationalist party eventually came to power. Marine Tondelier, the head of France’s Green party, scoffed at Ms. Le Pen’s idea and, instead, suggested solutions to warming temperatures that included “greening” cities and making buildings more energy efficient. An opinion essay in Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, defended air-conditioning because “making our fellow citizens sweat limits learning, reduces working hours and clogs up hospitals.” Libération, a left-wing daily, countered such arguments, writing that the technology was “an environmental aberration that must be overcome” because it blows hot air onto streets and guzzles up precious energy. “Is air-conditioning a far-right thing?” one talk show asked provocatively, reflecting how divisive the issue had become... while many derided air-conditioning for years as an unnecessary — and awfully American — amenity, it is now increasingly seen as a necessity to survive scorching summers. Despite rising temperatures, only about half of homes in Italy today have air-conditioning, according to Italy’s national statistics institute. In Spain, real estate data indicates the share is roughly 40 percent. And in France, only an estimated 20 to 25 percent of households are equipped with air-conditioning, according to the country’s Agency for Ecological Transition. In 2023, 62.5 percent of energy consumed by households in the European Union was used to heat homes, versus less than 1 percent to cool them, according to E.U. statistics. Energy costs are also usually higher in Europe than in the United States — where almost 90 percent of homes use some form of air-conditioning. The dense architecture of European cities is ill suited to ungainly air-conditioning units, and in places like Paris, securing the necessary approvals for old or historical apartment buildings can be complex... Despite her modulated tones, the public debate has focused on what air-conditioning represents. Those who see it as an evil, mainly on the left, say it is another example of leaders’ addressing the symptoms of climate change rather than dealing with its underlying causes. They argue that it is an energy-hungry technology that must be deployed sparingly for those who really need it, while society puts in place solutions that do not exacerbate global warming... But to its supporters, mainly on the right, air-conditioning is unfairly vilified by environmentalists. They note that France relies primarily on carbon-neutral nuclear energy to provide electricity used for cooling, and air-conditioning units leak less polluting refrigerating gases than they used to. “There is no reason to cling to ideological dogmatism and oppose concrete solutions,” a group of conservative lawmakers allied with Ms. Le Pen wrote in a bill proposed last month that would make it mandatory to air-condition certain public spaces. And fans of air-conditioning argue that solutions like sun-blocking shutters will get you only so far in the years to come. Much of southern Europe now experiences more than two months each year when daily high temperatures exceed 85 degrees... In many places, the heat is not just longer-lasting but also more intense... Perhaps no one displays that ambivalence better than Christian Meyer, the head of a company near Strasbourg that installs air-conditioning units. Despite having a vested interest in promoting air-conditioning, he was recently quoted in a local newspaper saying that he wasn’t a fan and that he didn’t use it himself. (“The best air-conditioning is a well-insulated house,” he is quoted as saying.) For now, as the arguments continue, the government’s official heat-related advice takes a middle road, of sorts. Air-conditioning is on its list of options to keep a home cool. But the guidelines warn that it is “a solution that should be considered only after all other options have been exhausted.”"
Given their insanity about general climate change virtue signalling, the cope is going to be, even if they accept that Europe refusing AC will do nothing to fight climate change (unlikely unless you pin them down hard, as you can see from the article), that (white) European seniors dying because of a lack of air conditioning will inspire the rest of the world to destroy their economies like Europe to fight climate change
Why Brussels doesn’t hate air conditioning — but Europe still struggles with it - "In a summer when radio failed to deliver a single memorable hit, one subject managed to keep everyone talking: Europe’s troubled relationship with air conditioning. It’s not a new debate. Every few years, as temperatures climb, the transatlantic divide on cooling habits resurfaces. But this year, it grew unusually fierce, straining cultural ties between Europeans and Americans almost as much as Trump’s tariffs or disagreements over Ukraine’s future. Americans, baffled that Europeans can live without constant cooling, defended their beloved AC with the same bitterness Italians judge other cultures' pizza toppings or the French bristle at foreigners mangling ‘la langue française’. The numbers of this divide are stark: nearly 90% of US households have air conditioning, compared with around 20% in Europe, with some countries falling far below that figure. In France, the topic has even entered the political arena, with far-right leader Marine Le Pen calling for a major air conditioning infrastructure plan. Meanwhile, international news outlets like the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal warned that Europe’s slow adoption of cooling technology is already costing lives... Much of the practical regulation on air conditioning comes from member states, though. Spain, Italy, and Greece, for example, limit how cold public buildings can be set in summer, often no lower than 27°C. The aim is to conserve energy, especially during supply crises. Some historic city centres restrict the installation of external AC units for aesthetic reasons. There are environmental concerns, too. Studies show that AC units can raise outdoor temperatures in dense urban areas by several degrees, worsening the so-called “heat island effect.” But these are exceptions, not an explanation for Europe’s overall low uptake. The rest of this story lies in history and culture. Southern Europe built its cities to cope with heat: thick walls, shaded windows, and street layouts designed to maximise airflow. That’s also why white paint dominates the picturesque skylines of Mediterranean places like Santorini in Greece or Vieste in Italy: The bright surfaces reflect sunlight and radiant heat, helping interiors stay cooler. In northern Europe, on the other hand, summers were once mild enough that cooling was rarely needed. Air conditioning, when it appeared in Europe, was seen as a luxury or even a health risk. Many Europeans still believe exposure to cold air can make you sick, and the stereotype persists that AC is for rich people. Then there’s the money issue. European electricity is far pricier than in the US, and the 2022 energy crisis only reinforced the point. Even though prices have since stabilised, the extra expense of running an air conditioner remains prohibitive for many households."
Weird. I thought greedy companies were why energy was expensive and the US is a capitalist hellhole, and renewable energy, which is more prevalent in Europe than in the US, led to cheaper energy
Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane - "One Pacific island civilization that was determined to absorb foreign technology without letting it change their culture was Japan... Travel to Japan today, and I guarantee that unless you are staying in a very backwoods rural place, the room where you stay will have an air conditioner... Europe is different. Data sources differ, but nobody puts AC usage in Europe (or the UK) at more than around 20%. This technology, which almost all Japanese people enjoy, is one that most Europeans do without. You might think Europe is simply too far north to need AC. But latitude is no longer the defense against heat that it used to be, because climate change is stalking the region: With this rise in temperature — and the aging of the European population — has come a rise in preventable death. Estimates of heat-related mortality vary, but the most commonly cited number is 175,000 annually across the entire region. Given that Europe has a population of about 745 million, this is a death rate of about 23.5 per 100,000 people per year. For comparison, the U.S. death rate from firearms is about 13.7 per 100,000. So the death rate from heat in Europe is almost twice the death rate from guns in America. If you think guns are an emergency in the U.S., you should think that heat in Europe is an even bigger emergency. Most of this death is preventable. The technology that prevents it is air conditioning. Barreca et al. (2016) find that heat deaths in America declined by about 75% after 1960, and that “the diffusion of residential air conditioning explains essentially the entire decline in hot day–related fatalities”. Essentially, wherever AC gets rolled out, heat-related death plunges. Taking Barreca’s estimate and applying it to Europe suggests that as many as 100,000 European lives — 0.013% of the population — could be saved every year if the 80% of European households who don’t have AC were to get it. And yet Europe has not done this. The official reason — at least, where one is given — is that AC uses electricity, which contributes to climate change... Green organizations like the World Resources Institute, which have a lot of influence in Europe, consistently recommend far less effective “passive cooling solutions” due to emissions concerns. And European regulations do block AC, by mandating that newly built buildings be carbon-neutral. (This in addition, of course, to good old NIMBYism also blocks AC installation, especially in the UK.)... This is immediately recognizable as the poisonous ideology of degrowth. Degrowth frames climate change as a problem of personal overconsumption and extravagance to be curbed by austere self-restraint and government policy, rather than as a technological problem to be overcome by installing green energy. This is foolish, of course — it leads to human suffering while not doing much to actually curb climate change. But it’s very popular in northern Europe. The climate-based crusade against AC is a little infuriating, because it probably kills a lot more people than the reduced emissions save. Right now, Europe is responsible for only about 13% of global carbon emissions from fossil fuel use, meaning that the climate impact of installing AC all over the region is pretty minimal. Does anyone think that incredibly tiny margin of emissions reduction is really worth tens of thousands of lives a year? But from reading anecdotes like Hammel’s, I kind of suspect that there’s a second, deeper reason why Europe so far refuses to install AC: protection of traditional culture. The thing about German elites pooh-poohing AC as an unnecessary American extravagance suggests that some Europeans view lack of AC as quintessentially European culture — a tradition by which Europeans can define their own uniqueness vis-a-vis the rest of the world."
Time to mock US gun deaths, which make it a hellhole everyone needs to escape
When you literally kill your own people to virtue signal for climate change
Why Brussels doesn’t hate air conditioning — but Europe still struggles with it - "Spain, Italy, and Greece, for example, limit how cold public buildings can be set in summer, often no lower than 27°C. The aim is to conserve energy, especially during supply crises. Some historic city centres restrict the installation of external AC units for aesthetic reasons... Air conditioning, when it appeared in Europe, was seen as a luxury or even a health risk. Many Europeans still believe exposure to cold air can make you sick, and the stereotype persists that AC is for rich people. Then there’s the money issue. European electricity is far pricier than in the US, and the 2022 energy crisis only reinforced the point. Even though prices have since stabilised, the extra expense of running an air conditioner remains prohibitive for many households."
The New Hot Topic in European Politics Is Air Conditioning - WSJ - "Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, proposed a major campaign to install air conditioning in schools, hospitals and other institutions. In the U.K., the Conservatives urged London’s Labour Party mayor to eliminate rules that restrict how air conditioning can be included in new housing. In Spain, the far-right Vox party has been highlighting air-conditioning breakdowns to criticize the country’s establishment parties... The prospect of U.S.-style air conditioning sends shivers through some Europeans. In France, media outlets often warn that cooling a room to more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit below the outside temperature can cause something called “thermal shock,” resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness and even respiratory arrest. That would be news to Americans who expect indoor temperatures to be cooled to around 75 degrees even when it is near 100 outside. Others fear respiratory infections that might result from spending long periods in air-conditioned rooms... French officials want to expand geothermal heating and cooling systems to avoid the need for traditional air conditioning. Such systems circulate water from deep underground, removing heat from buildings into the ground in the summer and putting it back in the winter. The process is much more efficient than normal air conditioning and avoids sending heat into the air. The upfront investment, however, is significant and possibly prohibitive for installation in buildings that are more than a century old and common in Europe’s old-world capitals."
Because the "far right" loves air conditioning, it must be banned to stop "fascism"
Thread by @AndrewHammel1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "A thread about the class dynamics of air-conditioning in Europe. I believe attitudes toward air-conditioning are class markers in many European countries. Air-conditioning is seen as prototypically American, and that's important. I have lived in Germany for two decades and have observed the pro-A/C contingent here go from total defeat to now being on the verge of victory. The reason is normies. I remember visiting a local grocery store in my neighborhood just after it installed air-conditioning. This was 2016. You'd see dozens of people enter the store from the hot sticky weather outside and visibly transform, chattering with surprise and pleasure. Of course, people spent 3x as much time and 1.5 times as much money in that store to get relief from sticky heat. After this experience, they realize the only way to achieve truly comfortable temperature *and humidity* on a hot summer day is air-conditioning. They save up €250 and buy a portable "monoblock" unit for their apartment. Loud and inefficient but gets the job done. But these are ordinary middle- and working-class Germans, who are just as pragmatic as people anywhere. The urban haute bourgeoisie -- bureaucrats, public media executives, NGO employees, humanities grads, journalists, professors, lawyers, judges, etc. -- are the holdouts.
First of all, *every one* of these people has a story about visiting the USA and nearly freezing to death in an over air-conditioned store or office. Every. Damn. One. I can predict exactly when they will wheel out this traumatic tale, I just let it unfold naturally. This anecdote conveys two pieces of status-related information. First: "I can afford to travel overseas." Second: "Americans are ignorant and wasteful." To these people, A/C is the ultimate American solution to a problem. Instead of accepting nature as it is, Americans use expensive, wasteful technology to artificially change the environment to fit their fat, lazy lifestyles. They insist on defying and conquering nature, not "cooperating" with her. And they don't care if they cook the planet while they do so. I'd be lying if I said this argument was 100% bogus, there's certainly some truth to it. But the European urban haute bourgeoisie turns it into a rigid ideological aversion to any form of air-conditioning. They wear understated linen clothes, their children play with wooden toys, and they buy organic food and "sustainable" everything. There's certainly no way in hell they're going to put a loud, energy-hogging piece of *American* technology into their quaint high-ceilinged apartment in a 140-year-old building. Which is fine, except for one fact:
These people regard these decisions not just as their personal lifestyle choices, but rather as a *model for all of society*. They regard themselves as a revolutionary vanguard of advanced ecological consciousness which must aid the less enlightened to reduce their carbon footprints. And these people *run German society*. They dominate in public broadcasting and urban planning circles. Just a few weeks ago, on the main evening news show, which is watched by millions, a journalist doing a feature on a heat wave mentioned air-conditioning only to have the studio moderator immediately break in and say "Yes but air-conditioning is a climate-killer" and the remote journalists nodded in agreement, as if this were universally accepted self-evident truth. Which, among the circles *they frequent*, it is. Urban planners and people who create construction codes in Germany are also brigadiers in the anti-A/C jihad. All across Europe and the UK, urban planners and bureaucrats and officials are preparing "heat reduction" plans to cope with increasingly frequent European heatwaves. As often as not, these reports never even mention air-conditioning. They talk about "cooling centers", "misting stations", "cooling vests", sunshades, blinds, louvers, more trees, more parks, complicated evaporation cooling systems, adjusted work rules, etc. But never once do they even mention air-conditioning, even when addressing "vulnerable populations" such as schoolchildren or hospital patients or seniors. It's almost as if these planning bureaucrats take a perverse pride in ignoring the elephant in the room. And the irony is that sustaining all of these complex, inadequate solutions during long heatwaves is more expensive and inefficient than just installing A/C. Which is safer and cheaper: Rounding up all 85 residents of a nursing home and transporting them to a makeshift "cooling center" where they'll be sprayed with mist in front of fans -- or just putting an air-con unit in each resident's room? The answer is obvious to a pragmatic normie, but is unacceptable to a "sustainability"-obsessed member of the laptop class.
Which is why it's pretty common on sweltering days to hear Germans complain about the "goddamn 'eco-this' 'organic-that' pencil pushers" who continue to force them to sweat for hours in overheated hospitals, classrooms, and offices."
Bjorn Lomborg on X - "Climate hypocrisy. Many Europeans disapprove of keeping cool with air conditioning, because of its climate impact. But most have no problem using 100x more energy on heating to keep warm. Climate change emotion often trumps logic. As France’s environment minister says: “We need air-conditioning to give vulnerable people some respite. But we mustn’t do it everywhere.”"
Meme - "Climate hypocrisy: Don't use air con - but 100x more on heating is fine? Climate-worried Europeans despise air conditioning to keep cool. But they have little problem using 100x more energy to keep warm
EU home energy use
This causes climate change! 0.6% Space cooling
Not this 62.5% Space heating"
Once again, identity issues (distinguishing themselves from the US) make people do stupid things
I Once Thought Europeans Lived as Well as Americans. Not Anymore. - "European bureaucracy is literally deadly... European governments do a great deal to discourage air-conditioning, whether central AC or window units. You might need a hard-to-get permit to install an AC unit, and in Geneva you have to show a medical need for it. Or in many regions of Europe, the air conditioner might violate heritage preservation laws, or be illegal altogether. In Portofino, Italy, neighbors have been known to turn each other in for having illegal air-conditioning units. The fines can range up to €43,000, though most cases are settled out of court by a removal of the unit. In Britain, even if you can get through the regulations, the cost of energy can be double that in America, so good luck with your bills. By refusing to build out its nuclear and wind power, and moving away from coal, Britain has ended up short of affordable energy, which has penalized its manufacturing and tech sectors as well... “Why is no one talking about Europe’s lack of clothes dryers?” You can find them in about 30 percent of European homes, compared to the estimate of 85 percent for the United States... The question of whether Americans or Europeans have higher living standards has preoccupied me much of my adult life. I went to live in Germany as a student in 1984, and I marveled at how many things were better there than in the United States. The streets were cleaner, crime was much lower, many of the foodstuffs tasted better, and there were so many interesting places to see. I was only half an hour from France (Colmar) and an hour from Basel, Switzerland. A comparable location in the United States is difficult to imagine. I firmly felt that the West German living standard, at that time, was not worse than the American living standard, all things considered. In some important ways it seemed obviously better, ranging from the quality of public goods to the orderliness of everything around me. And it was the first time in my life I ever tasted what I now would call “real bread.” Now, 40 years later, I’ve massively revised my original judgments. I go to Europe at least twice a year, and have been to almost every country there. More and more I look to it for its history—not for its living standards. It is a small thing, but I now can get excellent bread in the United States, and that has been true since the 1990s. That local artisan bakery in Brooklyn will not itself tip the balance, but it reflects the more general truth that one of these societies has been better at innovation than the other. American life has improved a lot more than German life has. When I visit Germany these days, as I have done twice over the last year, it feels to me like a pleasant, well-ordered version of the 1990s—a country preserved in a kind of amber, with good intentions but also loads of complacency. Most of all, in terms of per capita income America has opened up a big and apparently growing lead over West Europe. We typically grow at rates of 2 percent or more, and the major European nations might struggle to grow at 1 percent. The United Kingdom has hardly seen wage or productivity growth since the Great Recession of 2008. We are at the point where Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state by many measures, now has higher per capita income than many of the major West European nations, and is almost on a par with Germany. Those numbers do not capture all features of life quality, including leisure time, but it is hard to see them as good news for the Europeans. The crime rate is still worse in America, but that has fallen a great deal. In New York City, for instance, the murder rate today is about one-sixth of its peak in the 1990s. It’s true: We are not catching up to the quality of Europe’s historical monuments, churches, and art museums. Perhaps we never will. But as our real incomes rise, European vacation becomes cheaper. I am distressed when I see how many American tourists are milling about southern France or Amsterdam, but that too was quite different 40 years ago. Money talks—and that is one reason why today so many French speak good English and in fact are happy to do so. Circa 2025, my subjective judgment is that American living standards are 20 to 30 percent higher than those in Western Europe. That difference is likely to grow. To be sure, we should not put all European countries in the same basket. Norway and Luxembourg are much wealthier, because of oil wealth and finance, respectively. Switzerland stands above its West European peers, perhaps because it is better run, has lower taxes, and the cantons compete against each other to attract population. At the same time, Europe has many poorer parts to the east, most of all in the Balkans, and their living standards fall well below the American poverty line and seem stuck there. Paul Krugman frequently put forward the argument that American and West European living standards are roughly the same, with Americans earning more but working longer hours. But as history unfolds, that view seems increasingly untenable. I worry much more about Europe in the longer run... Two of America’s biggest problems are obesity and opioid addiction, with opioid deaths running at about 54,000 a year. Yet both of those problems are getting better... One major advantage of America is likely to increase with time, and that is one of scale. Americans do things big, think big, and have created some of the world’s largest companies, most obviously in the tech sector, where size is often rewarded. You can see this in the stock market valuations of those tech companies, including Nvidia, which at its current $4 trillion or so valuation is worth more than the entire German stock market. Europe shows few if any signs of catching up in this area, or of having a major presence in the commercial spaces for artificial intelligence. If anything, EU regulations go out of their way to prevent Europe from excelling at tech... The brain drain from Europe (and other regions) to the United States seems to be accelerating in the areas of tech and AI, most of all for young people. If you want to do a big, successful start-up, you probably should move to America. End of story. America has major and growing companies in these areas, full of foreigners, and Europe does not... “Europeans switch jobs much less frequently, and restructuring is much rarer.”... Population aging and low birth rates are another problem that will make it harder for Europe to catch up... many of Europe’s immigrants are from quite different non-Western cultures. Furthermore, Europe is not always drawing in the top achievers from those cultures, whereas in America, Indian and Pakistani immigrants are quite successful, phenomenally successful in the case of the Indians ($156,000 median household income in America, and $108,000 for Pakistani Americans)... [tourists] will increasingly see Europe as a storehouse of history"
Thread by @SarahTheHaider on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It’s really shocking visiting the UK. I don’t know what I expected but what I found is what could be at best described as a developing country. London has a few pretty blocks, and the rest is literally disintegrating. Trash everywhere, tube was unbearable (due primarily to the body odor from the other riders). And yet, eating out wasn’t cheap, and neither were the hotels. Avoid. “So, is Britain poorer than Mississippi? The answer appears to be yes, and it’s yes for many other European countries as well.”"
