Many people assume that air conditioning is worse for the environment than heating is. After all, why do we hear about it so much more? The truth is that heating a home uses considerably more energy than cooling one does. A 2020 study found that homes located in the coldest parts of the United States used considerably more energy and largely emitted more greenhouse gases than those in the warmest parts of the country did. A 2013 study concluded that living in colder climates in the United States demands more overall energy than living in warmer climates does: Climate control in Minneapolis uses about three and a half times more energy than it does in Miami.
In this light, it’s curious we spend more time criticizing people in dangerously hot climates for running the air conditioner than we do finger-wagging at people who run an oil-burning furnace during a Northern winter. And while air conditioning is very much linked to summer power outages, so is heating. Consider the collapse of the electric grid in Texas during the record-breaking 2021 cold snap, outages that likely caused the deaths of hundreds of people.
Treating air conditioning as an unnecessary luxury is not a victimless misconception: When we adopt this worldview, it’s the poor who really suffer the consequences, not wealthy professionals who might get a bit sweatier at the gym. Dense cities create what’s known as a “heat island” effect, and poorer people and people of color are more likely to live in treeless areas that reach deadly temperatures during heat waves. An extensive recent report in the Lancet found that people around the world are being exposed to more heat extremes than ever before, and that people with lower incomes are in considerably more danger than those who are better off.
In 2014, the World Health Organization estimated that by 2050, an additional 255,000 people could die each year from heat waves—deaths that would be heavily concentrated among poorer people without access to indoor cooling. While more and more people are buying air conditioners around the globe, the International Energy Agency estimated in 2018 that only 8 percent of the 2.8 billion people living in the world’s hottest places have access to one. And as the climate changes, many people may end up being blindsided by deadly heat waves that resemble nothing they’ve ever experienced before.
While there are many programs in the United States that help low-income people afford to run their heaters, far fewer programs exist for air conditioning, Simply giving people air conditioners, as more cities are starting to do, may not help much if people can’t afford to run them. During last summer’s heat wave, Washingtonians couldn’t use the over $60 million the state receives from the Low Income Home Energy Assistance Program, a federal initiative that pays for utility bills, on air conditioning bills: State rules mandated that the funds could only be used for heating. Other states, such as Massachusetts, have similar rules on the books.
This link between air conditioning and luxury is reflected in U.S. laws, as Portland residents discovered in the summer of 2021. Throughout the United States, while landlords are required to provide heating essentially everywhere, far fewer states or cities mandate that landlords provide cooling. Most only require that landlords maintain air conditioning if it comes with the unit—and many units, especially less expensive apartments that poorer people can afford, do not.
How can we protect people from heat while protecting the planet? Perhaps the first step is acknowledging that the existence of air conditioning isn’t the problem: It’s that we use it and distribute it so unequally, with gigantic luxury office buildings and fancy condos using far too much of it, while sweltering, old apartment buildings populated by the poor often go without. In this light, we should pass laws that ensure that people who need access to air conditioning are able to access it and are (equally importantly) able to pay for it.
