Air Conditioning Is Not a Luxury, It Is a Necessity

Oh no you’re gonna trigger the Germans.

We have those stupid regulations in Finland about how the outside of our apartments buildings should look - meaning you cannot put the condenser visibly on the outside of the building. I've heard stories of residents being scalded for putting flowers on their balcony railings that face outwards as it ruins the "look". Given almost all apartment buildings are built consistently between every floor they could ensure consistent placement of condensers across all floors and it wouldn't even look that bad.

What makes the situation much worse here is we have insanely good insulation on the buildings. They trap heat for the cold winters, but the walls just maintain all the heat during the summers. A new approach is needed to make it livable here.

In my own apartment I am not able to create a cross-breeze through strategic window opening to try and bring in cooler air from outside, so I've resorted to opening a window on one side of the apartment and using a Vornado fan to push air out the window on another side of the apartment - creating a pressurized system.

I don't necessarily disagree, but I am wondering what luxury will next become a necessity if we keep increasing our energy usage in order to get both more luxuries and necessities?

On the bright side, I suppose one mitigating factor is that renewable energy makes it less harmful to use energy to power A/C usage.

First words from the article:

>Yet as heat waves kill tens of thousands of Europeans each year

...Each year? Was it the case every year twenty, thirty, forty, fifty years ago? What has changed, miss Follett?

Last words from the article:

>But forgoing air conditioning is a refusal to move on from a lethally hot past.

Gee, I wonder if this global warming thing wasn't a mistake to let happen...

If that author is right, then we can and should punish the people responsible for global warming? Because that includes a lot of her colleagues at Cato and WaPo. The same who were against the same carbon taxes that would be useful to reduce and mitigate the global warming that kills...

Don't get me started on how it works in my country.

People who don't have a balcony are screwed and are entirely dependent on homeowners association which arbitrarily can agree or not, or they can stay indecisive about it and not let you do anything.

Well, if you have a balcony? you just put it there and make the necessary holes for it, problem solved.

The effect is exactly the same - you just have AC installed. In one case you have to go through totally unnecessary hoops, and in other case, you just do whatever you want.

What's even the point of it?