Americans aren't cooling their homes to 64F in the summer, I have no idea where you get that idea. Generally people will cool their homes to somewhere around 72-78F, which is 22.22-25.56C.

+ it lowers humidity and moves air.

> Solar panels + cooling + heating heat pump is the most logical combination as we are past the point of no return on global warming.

I’ve been feeling confused lately about the news that the far-right parties in UK & France want more AC and the left-wing complain it’s not solving the root problems.

Are people just not aware that heat pumps are a great solution for both heating and cooling, saving energy on heating during winter?

The primary difference being, Europe is not increasing their number of fault lines or bodies of water. The number of days of moderate to extreme heat in Europe have already significantly increased and will continue to.

Furthermore, the costs of modern cooling are infinitely cheaper than solutions, if they exist, for other natural disasters.

I lived in both Europe and the United States and traveled around the world. This article makes a lot of sense to me.

> Europe is usually not this hot, hence lack of AC in many places.

Europe averages 53k to 175k heat-related deaths per year. The difference depends on whether you listen to the EC or the UN. https://news.un.org/en/story/2024/08/1152766

The comparable number for the US is 4-11k, albeit with about 20% fewer people.

Note that the US is further south than Europe and generally has higher temperatures.

Also many old houses & modern insulated buildings have a significant heat inertia - so if the heat wave is not too long & you do sane heat management (open windows during the night to cool down the flat/house, keep windows closed during the day) then you will hardly notice the heat in an European home.

How many old people need to die in heatwaves before you accept that the climate is changing?

An American decided to be smug because Europe suddenly passed the threshold where aircon went from a nice to have to a necessity.

AC is far more efficient than most heating methods, but there isn't the same level of censure applied to traditional heating technologies. If you listen, people talk about AC like it's inherently polluting, like it's something to moralize.

Europe historically has not been this hot, but they regularly have heat waves. I remember a 40C heat wave more than a decade ago! That's enough time to add emergency infrastructure, unless you're hoping to snuff old people. When you get your third hundred year flood in a decade it's time to update your priors.

There are massive distributed solar deployments (eg. people putting cheap solar panels on their roofs, often backed by batteries) happening right now, those should help offset AC demands quite nicely.

They don't have any problem with impact from EVs on the grid, but god forbid AC units. One could obviously solve the peoblem with rooftop solar, which peaks just when you need AC the most.

It's just a meme but too-online professional opinion-havers memed themselves into taking it seriously. Many such cases unfortunately

Degrowth is absolutely not niche in Western Europe. In Germany and NL, it is the new religion along with free Palestine movement.

Take any moderately educated Zillenial and ask them what they feel passionately about.

People are feeling more and more alienated from large scale projects of humanity. They have also given up on religion itself. What remains is a facade of religion where degrowth and Palestine take act as Pseudo Religion.

Here in Germany I see stickers and Graffiti all the time.

“Fuck the big Tech”

“Fuck big oil”

“ChatGPT bad”

These are the kind of flyers I see. Of course I’m leaving out the Palestine stuff here.

There are close to Zero educated people excited about the idea of growth. Ask them and they would tell you they’d rather have all capitalists done away with return to a past when we were all peaceful and not “destroying the planet”.

Obviously I’m not claiming degrowth is majority. I’m claiming that at least within my bubble, zero people are excited about the potential of growth. And non trivial number of people want to kill growth.

I’m sorry to hear about your very odd friends, but I suggest you consider traveling more yourself and gather some personal insights of the world. You should very quickly come to realize that Europe is not one place, one kind of people. This isn’t really something one would say, having spent even just a minute in one or two places here that aren’t Germany or France. Odd to read that.

Europe is not a country. Given how many times we must have this conversation, I wonder if you guys are even taught geography in school?

"disgusted at European outlook on growth"?

Well, cancer is growth, nature and vitality, but not quite positive, is it?

Wasn’t so long ago that you were rather down on the American alternative:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43167215