Air Conditioning Is Fine

Over the weekend, The Guardian ran an article about how air conditioning is "destroying the planet." Joshua Foust, assistant professor at Syracuse University, took it to task on BlueSky and started a bunch of other discussion:

This [article] is satisfying an obvious fetish for sneering at vulnerable poor people, but also it is a classic example of the weird Euro-Puritanism about air conditioning, which is a minuscule carbon emitter compared to gas heating, data centers, cheap air travel, or cars. It’s such a weird, elitist thing to focus on.

Another way of looking at this: the US has larger areas experiencing consistent, extreme heat in the summer, but because of widespread AC adoption, annual heat deaths rarely rise above 2,000, or a hair over 1% as many as Europe. Their sneering contempt for AC is just mass death for poor people.

Europeans like to lecture Americans about how 20,000 people die per year from guns here, but that’s 10% of how many Europeans die of heat neglect each year. It’s crazy to me that this is such a sticking point for them.

That comparison with gun deaths was startling. Obviously, 20,000 gun deaths is terrible and unacceptable. But in comparison, the number of people who die from heat in the U.S. is around 2,000. Europe's somewhat larger population comes nowhere near making up for the discrepancy: 175,000 per year there vs. 2,000 in the U.S.

Some of the best related comments:

People didn’t “used to be fine” without air conditioning during heat waves in the U.S. - a lot more people *just died*. According to this study, air conditioning has cut heat deaths in the U.S. by around 80% since 1960.
Faine Greenwood

One of those hills I’m willing to die on is that especially with the ongoing revolution in renewable energy technologies, of all the problems in the world, electricity consumption and *especially* daytime consumption is really not among the major ones.... Electricity is among the very few things we actually know how to make in massive quantities with small enough environmental and social costs. Especially now, when renewable energy techs - and in particular solar PV and batteries - are advancing *MUCH* faster than even *optimists* dared to *hope*!!!
Janne M. Korhonen

Also, on this specific front: Japan has been using air-source heat pumps for both heating and cooling for 40+ years. This is quite literally a solved problem, and the parts of it that aren't, can be quite soon and are under active research. The Continent needs to get its head out of its ass.
Jordan Carlson

Every time air conditioning shaming comes up, I think about the fact that the energy demand (and carbon impact) of heating my home is about 4x higher than the carbon impact of cooling it, but I've never once seen anyone recommend that people move out of cold areas to areas that need A/C instead.
Christopher Schmidt

I used to be an air-conditioning snob, and still regret the effect it has had on our politics (allowing for the increasing number Congressional districts in the South and Southwest, and basically creating Florida as we know it). 

But that final point, about the energy efficiency of cooling vs. heating, is what originally convinced me it was stupid to be biased against air conditioning, if you think heating is fine.