How do I feel about air conditioning? On the one hand, I’m extremely hot. On the other, it’s destroying the planet | Emma Beddington
It’s way too hot. I’m cowering inside, curtains drawn, pale limbs clammily exposed, the sound of my overheated laptop fan drowning out the sound of an ancient, feeble desk fan. If it gets any hotter, I’ll stagger to my air-conditioned car and drive to the air-conditioned supermarket to stand in its chilly aisles, shamelessly fanning myself over the ravaged ice-cream cabinet in the freezer aisle. I’ve even become nostalgic for the summer when I shared an office with a man who insisted on having the AC set to 17C, meaning I had to wear a cardigan to work in August.
Ah, air conditioning, the dream. Or the nightmare? Welcome to appliance culture wars, 2025 edition. You may recall, in 2023, the US debated whether induction hobs were a communist plot; then last year Republicans tried, in all apparent seriousness, to pass the Liberty in Laundry and Refrigerator Freedom acts. This year has already featured Donald Trump pledging to “make America’s showers great again” (low water pressure means it takes 15 minutes to wet his “beautiful hair”) and now France is grappling with Marine Le Pen declaring herself its AC champion.
As the country suffered through an early summer heatwave, with temperatures reaching the 40s, schools closing and, according to modelling, an estimated 235 deaths, Le Pen pledged, if elected, to launch a “grand plan” to cool France. Her ally, Éric Ciotti, called for AC to be obligatory in schools, hospitals and care homes to “protect the most vulnerable”.
With even higher temperatures predicted, this might prove a popular promise. It would certainly please the many Americans holidaying in Europe, expressing their sweaty astonishment at how we manage here without the chilly kiss of refrigerant-gas-cooled air. But the French AC debate rapidly heated up: Le Pen faced scathing criticism from the Greens and ecological transition minister Agnès Pannier-Runacher, who noted Le Pen’s party voted against plans to develop more sustainable “cooling networks”. The environment agency president called AC “an alibi for inaction”. Accused of hypocrisy by right-wing commentators after reporting on environmental concerns around AC, Libération even published a follow-up confirming its offices were not air conditioned (though conceding a few “air coolers” had taken the temperature down to 32C – ugh – in the hottest spots).
Because climate control is a climate problem. In the US, where AC is ubiquitous and its necessity not up for debate, the Department of Energy says it accounts for about 12% of energy consumption in homes and “contributes significantly to carbon dioxide emissions, releasing over 100m metric tons annually”. In 2019, the International Energy Authority predicted that, as the rest of the world catches up, AC will produce 2bn tonnes of CO2 annually. Relying on it to cope with an ever-hotter planet contributes to global heating, making us need it more. That’s not a solution; in Pannier-Runacher’s words, it’s a “maladaptive” coping mechanism.
AC is quantifiably bad, but I think it’s also philosophically problematic. Cooling offers comfort, making the unbearable bearable, at least for now. That happens at a community level (no one is really disputing we should keep the very old, the very young and the vulnerable cool), but also individually. When you can buy a personal bubble of coolness and not truly feel the heat, the screaming urgency to tackle the collective issue of a world on fire can recede slightly.
And this is where I have to fess up. I actually have AC – a little freestanding unit we use only in the evenings, maybe 10 times a year. We also have solar panels and a battery, which helps me sleep at night, but the cool helps more. If the government came for my AC, I wouldn’t demand they “pry it out of my cold, dead hands”, as one Republican said of his gas stove, but at times like these, I’m deeply, guiltily glad of it.
Air conditioning isn’t the answer. We need more ambitious plans but, without them, many more people – not just rampant individualists, climate deniers, laundry liberators and fridge freedom fighters, but hot furtive hypocrites like me and anyone desperate to get some sleep – will be tempted by the easy, cool, breezy solution.
