Air Conditioning Culture Wars

When I gave birth to my daughter, I was agnostic about the birth itself. I had no birth plan or preconceived idea about how everything should go. A successful birth would be both my baby and myself coming out of it alive.

So in my 12th hour of labor, when I couldn’t see straight from the contractions, I asked for an epidural. The young 20-something midwife tried to low-key talk me out of it ‘But Frau Mayrhofer, you’ve come so far!’ I was having none of it.

I knew there was a very small window to get one, that this was the only baby I would ever have and that I wanted to remember giving birth. I wasn’t going to let the German bias to do things ‘naturally’ stop me. I told the young midwife, “Nein. I want it and I want it jetzt!”

This brings me to air conditioning.

I’ve been a little rage-y about it online. Once the thermometer hits 38C in Europe for more than a few days, out come the condescending articles from the American commentariat about European resistance to air conditioning.

I started this post with my willingness to get an epidural, to demonstrate I’m not the kind of person that believes in noble suffering. When I have a headache, I take an ibuprofen. When I’m pushing out a six-pound human, I get an epidural, and if it’s really hot, I try to cool down.

I am not reflexively against more air conditioning in Europe; I just hate the way the debate is framed online. Lack of air con is presented as an obtuse and misguided eco-fundamentalist practice in self flagellation or some EU police-state refusal to give the people what they want.

The way I see it, the lack of air conditioning is the confluence of several factors:

1. European housing infrastructure is OLD. More than 70% of European buildings are over 35 years old. ****Retrofitting it is expensive and the tradeoff, until very recently does not seem worthwhile.
2. This heatwave thing has really snuck up on Europe. There is a lag in figuring out strategies for dealing with it. There are still more deaths from winter cold than summer heat.
3. Cultural attitudes about nature and our relationship with it are different in Europe.

It’s exciting to make air conditioning a big culture war issue, but in the case of Germany (which I can speak to best), more than being environmentalists Germans are just really, really CHEAP (most will tell you so themselves).

You can walk into any electronics store right now and buy a mobile AC unit (they aren’t cheap though, around 800 EUR) Many Europeans just don’t care enough. Germans - and not the elite ones - just shrug it off.

I’ve been sleeping with a mini Muji fan on the lowest setting next to my side of the bed. I offered my (German) husband one, and he just says ‘I don’t like drafts’.

As a cultural experiment I asked my husband (who is very much not an environmentalist) if we should get a mobile AC.

His response: ‘Why? To use it one week a year?’ He went on to point out it’s clumsy and annoying to use with German windows and it will just sit in the basement most of the year.

An American friend of mine visited her 70-something German mother-in -law who lives on the fourth floor of an assisted living home here in the city. She found her making jam(!!!!) in this heat(!!!!).

My friend insisted on getting her a FAN. Her mother-in-law resisted against mightily. Friend wouldn’t back down. MIL relented and even admitted it was ‘rather pleasant’ to use the next day.

This is just a cultural attitude. Americans need to let it go!

For what it’s worth, I grew up in LA, in a 1930s bungalow during sweltering summers. It never occurred to my parents to get air conditioning. At the time, my (very American, also not enviromentalist) dad thought things like air conditioners, microwaves and dishwashers were for losers and sissies.

In the end, I think Monocle Magazine reporting from Paris, gets the balance right, I think:

The attitude on the streets was chiefly one of Gallic insouciance. “We’ll get through it,” the city’s bustling terraces seemed to murmur through the heat haze. Aspects of this come-what-may European attitude can seem charming and pleasingly pragmatic. But that doesn’t mean there isn’t a problem to deal with. The city simply wasn’t designed for the temperatures that it’s now routinely enduring…The brutal truth is that Europe is heating up faster than expected. To stay competitive and survive the summers to come, it needs to pick a side…attitudes, need to adapt. And fast. The Paris Paradox is how leaders can cut through the posturing and set a policy that works for both the people and the planet, keeping the city safe and productive. AC will be part of the answer. Sang-froid about the weather looks commendable but it’s delaying decisions that must be made now.

Many new builds in Europe include heat pumps. Air-to-air heat pumps can be used for both heating and cooling. The Nordics and Baltics are leading on installing these. After this summer, I expect the number to increase.

It is getting hotter, but this is a trend that’s only happened in the last 20 years - and very unevenly. You can find lots of Instagram reels about endless rainy European summers.

People like Noah Smith and Josh Barro conflate a dearth of air conditioning in Europe with environmentalism run amok; if that were the case AC would not be a standard feature in European cars.

And things are changing Katharina Dröge (of the German Green party!) has proposed — and called for a state-funded “cooling emergency program” for hospitals, nursing homes, daycare centers, and schools, paired with rooftop solar panels.

It’s hard to pivot on a dime (or a decade). So stop the finger wagging and give us a goddamn minute to adapt!