If you watched YouTube this past month you have no doubt seen reaction videos of Europeans visiting the United States for the World Cup soccer match. The games were not the highlight of the videos. The topic that caused the videos to go viral was the reaction to American culture, including the size of stores like Buc-ees, Costco, Walmart, and Bass Pro Shop, and the portion size at restaurants. European experiencing Texas barbeque for the first time was a hot topic, as was air conditioning. It is currently sweltering in Europe, and it was relatively hot in the Southern U.S. the past several weeks. Europeans appreciated the use of air conditioning, including inside some arenas.
Air conditioning is not common in Europe. Fewer than 5% of British homes have A/C. Exact figures for France are hard to come by. Some estimates say 25% of French households have some type of cooling but only 7% have true air conditioning. Some estimates put the proportion of households with A/C in Germany at single digits, while the sunny coasts of Spain and France have higher percentages. By contrast, 90% of households in the United States have air conditioning.
Europeans are baffled by American gun laws that allow handgun ownership. About 45,000 Americans die every year from gunshots but 60% are self-inflicted. Here is my point: more Europeans die annually from excess heat (43,700) than Americans who die from gun violence (23,434). Yet, most European countries ban or highly regulate handguns but refuse to embrace air conditioning. According to the Wall Street Journal:
Europeans have long shunned air conditioning, viewing it as noisy, a blight on their architectural heritage and, above all, unnecessary, as long as the summers were mild. They feared widespread adoption of the energy-hungry technology would undermine their ambition to lead the fight against climate change.
There are numerous reasons why Europeans lack air conditioning. Historically, summers were mild with occasional heatwaves lasting only a few days per year. In Europe electricity tends to cost nearly double the price in the U.S. Older buildings are difficult to retrofit with A/C. Buildings made mostly of stone would result in cooling the stone rather than retaining the cold inside. However, the opposition to air conditioning is also cultural. I have read numerous complaints about how air conditioning does not cool anything; it just transfers hot air from inside to outside. That is technically true but evicting the heat from inside makes life inside bearable.
In many instances government or city regulations inhibit the installation of air conditioners. More from WSJ:
In Geneva, the installation of an air conditioner is subject to strict energy-usage rules. London officials have forced homeowners to remove air conditioning because they haven’t resorted to other cooling methods, such as ceiling fans.
In Paris… residents must gain approval from the neighbors. Then, if the system is visible from the street, local officials can refuse if it mars the iconic, limestone facades of the city’s Haussmannian buildings.
…more than 100 cases involving air conditioning systems that have provoked legal wars, a sharp increase. Under French law, a building association can block the installation of a system if it produces more than five decibels during the day or three at night, roughly the noise of a light breeze.
European regulators prefer passive methods to reduce heat. Probably the biggest obstacle is European attitudes that view air conditioning as a luxury, decadent, wasteful and not environmentally friendly. Everything else is mostly just an excuse to block those willing to pay for cold air in their bedrooms at night.
Read more at WSJ: Europe Is Hot as Hell. Why Doesn’t It Want Air Conditioning?
Also see Goodman Health Blog: Extreme Heat is a Public Health Threat: Air Conditioning is the Solution