Editors at National Review Online highlight one of the silliest aspects of life in Europe.
Europe’s perennial climate panic has led to countless acts of economic and geopolitical self-harm, but for outright stupidity and life-threatening recklessness, the efforts by its governments to discourage air-conditioning are hard to beat.
AC, a product of American ingenuity, has been spreading across this country since the middle years of the past century. The boost that it has given, especially in hotter, more humid states, to livability, safety, and productivity has been a triumph. About 90 percent of U.S. households now have some form of AC, a level roughly comparable to Japan’s, although we lag South Korea. It’s a sign of the times that China is now home to more AC equipment than anywhere else and that demand for these marvelous devices is surging in India, too, albeit from a low base.
In Europe, however, AC is harder to find, with a penetration rate of somewhere between 20 and 30 percent, a number that masks higher rates in some of its more southerly countries. This lower take-up owes a great deal to the temperate climate that had prevailed in much of it, and quite a bit to the buildings that survive from that era. Old, grand architecture and AC are not always an easy fit. A certain snobbish/jealous disdain for the comforts of American life has also played its part. And so have electricity prices that are significantly higher than on this side of the Atlantic.
This expensive electricity is, in no small part, a consequence of the devotion of the European ruling class (and, regrettably, of quite a few of their subjects) to the “race” to net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050, a race as reckless as it is futile. Participating in it has meant that European governments have made it unnecessarily difficult to install AC. Their explanation is that generating additional electricity for extra AC will mean more greenhouse gas emissions.
