I’m an American living in Europe, so every summer, I hear a lot about air conditioning.  Europeans love to tell me about how it’s good that Europe is largely not air conditioned; after all, air conditioning is just a high carbon luxury.  Americans are just too used to their creature comforts, they say; if you’re serious about combating climate change, you have to stop relying on AC.

This is wrong.  Increasingly, air conditioning isn’t a luxury.  It is survival technology.