Von „Hitzepanik“ bis „Opfer am Altar“: Europas Klima-Kulturkriege verschärfen sich. Nach Schätzungen der WHO starben in Europa in den letzten vier Jahren mehr als 200.000 Menschen an Hitze.
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jul/05/europe-air-conditioning-culture-wars-heat-up?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=bluesky&CMP=bsky_gu_env
26 Kommentare
are AC’s illegal in europe?
Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice I am willing to make. Enjoy.
Second time in 24 hours I’ve seen this called a „culture war“
No, we don’t have much AC because we’ve never needed it until now
It’s not a war though, fuck this nonsense
I mean, the planet’s not gonna get less hot at this point so you may as well try to be comfortable and survive the hell. Hot places like Phoenix, AZ have this figured out, life is surprisingly normal there for a place where the summers are 100°F+ for multiple months straight.
The „culture war“ is ask made up bullshit.
The farright populist parties are using it to drum up anger, and the tabloid media is badly too follow along for clicks.
The truth is that in the vast majority of cases there is no law or regulation that stop anyone from getting an ac unit. It’s just that people don’t have them, because they are expensive and have never been seen as necessary.
We need to stop taking what populist are saying seriously and start realizing they will say any crazy shit to drum up anger. That’s literally what they do
HVAC is not rare alien tech- the “ culture war“ is just a spin on practical issue. The earth is hotter than it has been and it will getting hotter. The cat is out of bag so to speak- there is no reverting the climate to 50 years ago.
It’s not even that we don’t have AC or be able to afford one. Part of it is just plain stupidity, other is inability because people rent places. The third is misinformation where people are sold stories that evaporative coolers will work in Europe in enclosed spaces/rooms. So they buy that shit for 5th the price of portable AC and just create fucking sauna in their home increasing humidity to 100%.
I wonder why they don’t just look at Australia and copy them. There’s so much rooftop solar in most places that electricity is free for hours each day. European homes are far better insulated too, so they’d need far less energy. And AC also works in reverse as a highly effective heater.
German here. I’m not one of those people who say that „AC isn’t necessary“. It’s very necessary, and it has been necessary for some time, and it won’t get any better in the future. But it’s not as easy as going to Home Depot and buying a window unit on a Saturday.
(Disclaimer: I can only speak for Germany and my personal experiences. Other European countries face different or fewer challenges.)
1. Most Germans rent, not own. We don’t get to decide whether AC gets installed, that’s the landlord’s call, and most say no.
2. Our windows and walls aren’t built for it. German windows tilt open (Kippfenster) instead of sliding up, and walls are thick masonry, not drywall. A standard US window unit doesn’t fit. People end up jury-rigging vent hoses through a cracked tilt-window with cardboard and duct tape, and even that gets landlords complaining, even though it’s technically allowed.
3. Older gas heaters make this actively dangerous. Many homes still have older gas-fired water heaters (Gastherme). Running an AC unit changes air pressure in the room and can pull carbon monoxide back down the flue. That requires extra safety measures most people don’t have and can’t easily retrofit. That’s my problem right now. I talked to the landlord and my chimney sweeper, and they both said no.
4. Our daylight cycle doesn’t give us a cooldown window. Germany sits much further north than most of the US. In summer it doesn’t get dark until after 10:30pm and is light again by 4am. The „cool it down overnight“ strategy doesn’t apply: there isn’t enough dark, cool time to matter.
5. This heat is new. When I was a kid in the 1980s, a heatwave meant a few days of 30°C, then a big thunderstorm, and that was it. Not 40+°C for days and weeks.
6. Price and availability are also a joke right now. Most portable AC units are sold out. Scalpers are reselling leftover stock for up to €3000. And even in winter, when demand is low, the cheapest units still run about €600. This isn’t a „just go buy one“ situation, there’s often nothing to buy, and what’s left is priced like a scam.
I personally don’t care about the „environmental“ arguments. Yes, technically, they are correct, but I can’t save the planet while I’m in the hospital (which also doesn’t have AC, lol) because of heat stroke.
What’s the age demographic on these stats?
But why are they framing this as a European/cultural issue? I’m European, and we installed our first air conditioner 30 years ago; all my friends have air conditioning because summers are getting hotter.
The only people who don’t use air conditioning are those who can’t afford it.
So basically a mix of far right and American propaganda bots all over social media parroting garbage
I like how they are trying to turn “Climate change is directly killing people with extreme heat” into a culture war issue.
Really what culture war? People who can afford AC’s are buying them. That’s why they’re sold out in so many places. It’s just that for the longest time, AC’s weren’t really necessarily in parts of Europe. But climate is changing and people are adapting by buying AC’s.
The only people trying to make this into some imagined culture war are the right. While every sensible person is aware that AC is making things even worse going forward in the grand scheme of things, it’s also obviously largely a necessary evil by now. Good job humanity
The next time some southern US city gets a freak snowstorm that cripples the city for three days, I had *better* see hundreds of articles about how Floridians are BANNED from buying snowplows.
Wasn’t that hot – lots of people didn’t have AC. Now it’s hot people are getting AC. What a non story.
‚air conditioning culture wars‘.
Wtf.
There are no ac culture wars. We didn’t used to need them, we’re starting to, some people take some time to get used to change. I’ve seen this argument online, i have not heard even a single person in real life have this discussion. The thing people are talking about is if they personally find it time already to get ac or not.
The response to anyone getting ac is ‚enjoy‘.
No one cares.
>In Germany, which has some of the lowest air conditioning uptake in Europe, in part due to a high proportion of renters, some homeowners feel even June’s record-breaking heat was not disruptive enough to justify the purchase. “We’d consider getting air conditioning if the summers keep getting hotter, but when it’s just a few days we can bear it,” says Gabriele Werner, who works in the tourist information office of Neuzelle, near where the weekend heat was at its worst.
>When the Guardian visited Neuzelle and the neighbouring district of Neißemünde, where almost every second voter backed the AfD at the last election, the most common response to the weekend’s searing heat was apathy, along with pockets of outright denial.
>“Climate change is just a word that gets trumpeted,” says Reinhard Lange, a retired electrician whose 150-year-old house sits down the road from the weather station in Coschen that provisionally broke Germany’s national heat record on Sunday. “Back when I was a child, it was also warm. It just wasn’t played up.”
Yeeeesh. Absolute bat shit nonsense all around.
As someone who lived in Switzerland, Europeans made the AC issue worse form themselves. The infrastructure is there but no they wanted no ACs so much so new apartments don’t even have a way to install such units, even new apartments don’t have a housing to install it or any HVAC, sure the Japanese and Chinese sell ac units and have been for a while, but the arrogance of some people are beyond belief and coming from Japan where you have to have an hvac unit in your apartment I never understood why Europe was so behind when they always talk about global warming this and that and look at how bad things have gotten.
Is the Guardian pro-AC now?
I remember reading an opinion piece (probably over 20 years ago, and I can’t find it online) that claimed that air-conditioning was racist.
(The argument was that white people move to hot countries and can’t cope with the heat, but refuse to adopt the practices that local people use to cope with the heat, because of prejudice against them, and so resort to AC instead).
just power the ac with solar…
There is no culture war against ac in the Netherlands. It used to be that we didn’t really need them for the few days a year it gets warm. And because our houses are made completely of stone they don’t heat up that fast. So the first few days of heat temperatures are fine inside.
On top of that we consider those units to be a real eyesore. Inside and outside.
Now that we are having more and more heatwaves things are changing rapidly. People are buying ac en masse. We are nearing 25% of households who have an ac already.
Screw the poor, jail them for stealing electricity right?
This whole AC discussion is just manufactured to distract us from the fact that not taking climate change seriously has fucked us.
For the WHO European Region, the WHO states that around 175,000 people die from heat-related causes every year across its 53 member states.
So, comparing with the U.S.:
United States (official recorded heat deaths, 2020–2023): about 6,800.
Europe (scientific excess-death estimates):
2022: ~61,700
2023: ~47,700
2024: ~62,800 (newer study, if you’re interested in the most recent summer)
One important caveat: these figures are not directly comparable. The U.S. numbers are based on death certificates where heat is listed as a cause, while the European figures are excess mortality estimates (they include deaths where heat contributed indirectly, such as triggering cardiovascular or respiratory events). If the U.S. were measured using the same excess-mortality method, its estimates would also be substantially higher than the official death-certificate counts.