Air conditioning and the era of American excess
Can we cool on A/C?
Welcome to Planet Days, a green newsletter for a greenwashed Planet. Thank you to Sam Liptak for editing this post.
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🌡️🥵 I’m writing from Montgomery, Alabama, where the outside temperature is in the 90s Fahrenheit (32+ Celsius) and it's not even noon. But in this Airbnb we rented for the weekend, the temperature is a cool 68 F (20 C).
The miracle of air conditioning — and the topic of this post.
As a brutal heat wave sweeps across the American South, temperatures are creeping into dangerous territory.
Americans who can afford it are sheltering in their air-conditioned homes. Elsewhere is a different story: In India, where only 5% of homes have A/C, nearly 170 people have died as temperatures spiked to 113 degrees F (45 C).
Air conditioning is both a lifesaver and an existential problem. It literally saves lives during heat waves. But it also spews extremely potent heat-trapping refrigerants, contributing to the climate change that makes heat waves more frequent and intense.
But this paradox only tells part of the story. A/C’s very existence represents something else entirely, which if we can’t shake, throws a wrench in global climate goals: The excess of postwar America.
Nowhere is that more apparent than the stark difference in air-conditioning use between the United States and other Western countries: 90% of American households are equipped with air-conditioning, compared to less than 10% in Europe.
Part of that is the landscape and climate of the U.S. Most of the country gets much hotter than any part of, say, France. But how the U.S. is populated is also an intentional choice, a product of postwar prosperity.
As Americans came into new wealth after World War II, they moved to the suburbs, bought more cars and single-family homes, and installed air-conditioning units to cool down large swaths of the country previously too hot to live in.
Cities like Phoenix, Arizona, with only 65,000 residents in 1940, nearly doubled in size by 1950. It’s now the country’s fifth-largest city. This weekend, the desert oasis will reach 115 degrees F (46 C).
These decisions not only transformed the U.S. landscape; they also laid the groundwork for the contemporary American lifestyle — one that is completely at odds with climate goals.
Today, the U.S. uses more energy for cooling per person than any other country, according to a TIME analysis. Worldwide, A/C and other cooling units account for 20% of all building energy use and 4% of global greenhouse gas emissions.
Moving to sun-scorched territory also presents some obvious downsides.
When civilization butts up against land plagued by drought, wildfires, and extreme heat — all of which are made worse by climate change — what follows is a catastrophic mess (I’ve written about this before in the context of California's megadrought).
Air conditioning also exposes the vulnerability of our electricity sources:
In Mississippi and Louisiana, downed power lines last week left residents without power (and, therefore, A/C) during 90-degree F (32 C) heat.
In Texas, the state has asked customers to cut back on their electricity usage during peak demand.
And in India, power outages worsened already dire conditions, leaving people without A/Cs, fans, or running water.
Though renewables are helping the grid avoid the blackouts many Texans feared, experts say the grid is still unprepared for the heat waves that will be more common and intense in the future.
That means we must at least complement the short-term fix of A/C with more permanent, lasting solutions, like building design. For example, incorporating shade or natural ventilation, as well as more trees and green roofs, into new buildings makes cranking the A/C increasingly less necessary.
It may not be fair to lump A/C with other items of American excess, such as pickup trucks, McMansions, and an endless appetite for material wealth — since, after all, A/C is an unfortunate necessity for many given the reality of heat waves.
But still, the reliance on A/C is part of a long list of irreversible American endeavors that have subsequently hurt the climate — much like how the overinvestment in cars and highways came at the expense of bike lanes and passenger rail.
As more heat creeps into previously temperate places, like Northern Europe or the Pacific Northwest, A/C cannot be the sole solution. Though it's too late to reverse these past wrongs, it’s not too late to learn from them.
We bought a new build apartment last year and the heatwave we're experience in the UK made me realise it might be kinda perfect for the changing climate. We're north facing, so it stays cool. The walls are THICK and the doors are all firedoors, so again, very thick. It has an air flow system, which isn't air con, but it keeps the air moving, i'd be intrigued to know the energy difference this compared with air con would have.
I think Americans are very used to air con/heating. Once my brother lived in Minnesota, and told me how they had their heating so high they used to have to open the windows. It was snowing outside. Wild.