Everyone Should Have Air Conditioning

The Case For Global, Universal Access to Indoor Cooling

Air Conditioning Advert from the 1960s

Humans are the most heat-tolerant of all the great apes. We lack the thick coat of fur that envelops our chimpanzee and gorilla cousins. Our upright posture exposes us to less direct sun. And we have ten times the number of eccrine sweat glands, allowing for thermodynamically efficient liquid cooling. This thermal adaptability has served us well, allowing us to emerge from the forest, conquer the great African savannahs, and then the world.

Yet there is a limit. In conditions of high humidity, the human thermoregulatory system starts to break down at ambient temperatures of just 33°C (87°F). Beyond this level, our sweat glands fail to evacuate sufficient heat from the body and our core temperature rises. Our circulatory systems begin to give out at a body temperature of 40°C (104°F). And if it reaches 41°C (106°F), our tissues literally start to cook.

Such conditions were rare in the Pleistocene climate for which we evolved. But they are becoming more common as climate change accelerates. Just last week Europe was hit by a record heatwave in which at least 1,300 people are estimated to have lost their lives—an estimate that will certainly increase as more data rolls in.

“The rush really started on Wednesday, Thursday and ​the whole weekend, it was non-stop,” a French undertaker told Reuters on Tuesday. “At the weekend I received 150 calls, and had to say no to the 150 bodies … Families are ​calling us, nursing homes are calling us, police stations are calling us, municipalities are calling us.”

There are around 500,000 such heat-related deaths in the world every year. Most of these people do not die directly from heat stroke. Rather, extreme heat stress, more often, exacerbates an underlying health condition—like heart disease or kidney failure—to the point that it becomes fatal.

And fatalities are only the tip of the iceberg. Via this exact same mechanism, heatwaves do more than merely kill the elderly and the chronically ill. They make existing health conditions worse. Those who survive repeated heatwaves emerge weakened, sapped of their vitality, and impaired in their daily quality of life.

Even if we stopped emitting greenhouse gases tomorrow, the amount of irreversible warming we’ve already inflicted on the planet is a global health emergency. Focusing solely on emissions reductions won’t work. We also must adapt to the new, hotter reality.

There are some very good adaptation ideas we should pursue—like engineering passive cooling into new buildings and planting trees for shade in urban areas. But passive cooling solutions cannot do it alone. Mechanical air conditioning has been found to reduce heat-related deaths by up to 75%.¹ It must be part of the solution.

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Sinon o faitz, vostres n´er lo dampnage

At present, however, air conditioning is relatively scarce on a global scale. Although nearly ubiquitous in certain places (North America, Japan, Australia, and—increasingly—China), only around 30% of the global population has access to air conditioning in 2026.

The vast majority of those who lack air conditioning live in the developing world, where the energy-intensive process is cost-prohibitive. Curiously, there are also hundreds of millions of holdouts in Europe, a very wealthy region that has—in stark contrast to its advanced economy peers—resisted the technology.

Part of this difference is climatic. Northern Europe has one of the mildest climates on the planet, and the need for air conditioning has historically been limited to just a handful of days a year. The portion of the United States most climatically similar to Europe—the Pacific Northwest—has until recently also had very low rates of air conditioning penetration.

But there is a rather substantial political difference too. Much of the European environmental movement and several of the continent’s left-wing political parties oppose air conditioning on supposed ecological grounds. This view holds that air conditioning is morally impermissible given it uses energy and energy represents around 75% of global carbon emissions.

“We can't install air conditioning everywhere. It's a false solution that makes the problem worse,” in the words of Jean-Luc Mélenchon, head of France’s largest left-wing coalition. The nation’s current environment minister, Monique Barbut, has said she is “horrified” by the idea of air conditioning becoming more widespread.²

This puritanical stance is grounded more in ideological fervor than sound, scientifically-guided reasoning. Firstly, there is nothing particularly moral about a policy that condemns vulnerable people to suffer and die unnecessarily. Indoor cooling is not a luxury good like international air travel, a second home, or (in much of the world) automobile ownership. It is a vital healthcare intervention and should be regarded as such.

And secondly, there is no inherent trade-off between expanding access to air conditioning and reducing carbon emissions. Air conditioners are powered by electricity, making it easy to run them on low-carbon sources of energy like wind and solar. This is very much unlike space heating, which is often powered by direct combustion of fossil gas or fuel oil via furnaces and boilers.

Additionally, ramping up air conditioning offers a remarkable opportunity to decarbonize space heating in temperate areas of the world—like Europe—that require both cooling in summer and heating in winter. Rather than install unidirectional air conditioners, European nations could (and should) install heat pumps.

Heat pumps are effectively air conditioners that can also work in reverse and provide heating as well as cooling. Europe has already launched a massive campaign to coax households into ditching fossil heating for clean, electric heat pumps—a necessary measure to reach climate targets. Combining these efforts with a push for universal air conditioning would effectively kill two birds with one stone—saving carbon emissions in winter and saving lives in summer.

Step into the sun

The drive for universal air conditioning can also breathe new life into the campaign for global universal electrification. Over 600 million people—mostly in Africa—lack access to electricity altogether. These people are also among the most vulnerable to extreme heat.

The most obvious way to deliver cooling services to these people is to accelerate the penetration of solar into rural Africa and pair that solar with air conditioning. These solar panels would have the added climate benefit of displacing dirty biomass or diesel, which—in most cases—would otherwise have filled the gap in time.

The costs of solar, battery storage, and air conditioning have all fallen dramatically in the past few decades. In the not too distant future, we can imagine NGOs installing combined solar/storage/AC units in at least one building in every village in Africa, ensuring cooling access to the most vulnerable on the hottest days.

Broadening air conditioning use helps to decarbonize space heating in the cooler, developed world, and accelerates electrification efforts in the warmer, developing world. Done properly, it can reduce global carbon emissions rather than increase them. It also has enormous public health benefits, improving both mortality and quality of life scores for millions.

Moreover, air conditioning—on a macroeconomic level—pays for itself. Extreme heat significantly impairs GDP through its effects on productivity. Air conditioning prevents these impairments, boosting overall economic growth.

We must stop regarding air conditioning as a luxury. Rather, we should view it as we do clean drinking water or sufficient food for survival. It may be premature or impractical to declare air conditioning a universal human right. But governments should certainly create policies that promote the widest possible access to the ambient air temperature our bodies require to survive and thrive.

Earthview is a reader-supported publication devoted to climate change and the environment. Please consider a paid subscription to support the work we do and access premium content.

1. https://impactlab.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/Barreca-2016-Adapting-to-Climate-Change.pdf

2. https://www.france24.com/en/tv-shows/tech-24/20260628-what-france-gets-wrong-about-air-conditioning