cross-posted from: https://piefed.world/c/shit/p/1225516/very-hard-choice
this post was submitted on 28 Jun 2026
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As a non-European living in Europe, I have to agree with the Europeans on this one. It's hard to justify dropping 1000+ EUR on something you would get to use only for about a week every year. It's more economical to just suffer.
Speaking as someone who lives in Germany, this is a common sentiment from old timey Germans that hasn't been true for awhile. It's far more than a week every year and it'll only get worse.
It's like the memory of the past is so strong it overwrites the present day experience. I think the truth of the matter is home ownership is so low that installing AC is never even considered by the owning class. Germans definitely have a culture of not needing AC and like superstitiously not liking them, but honestly California had similar beliefs when I lived there but they had just started to cave to the present reality. I think Germany is a decade behind on this matter and in 10 years 80% of the population will have AC and the last 20% will be the people whose landlords refuse to invest in their properties and blame it on the infrastructure not being built for AC.
Everyone should be installing heat pumps for winter, too. The ability to cool in the summer is basically a bonus, that they can run the system in reverse.
Reverse cycle systems. Pretty common in Australia, you get heating AND cooling.
A week this year will turn to 3 weeks in five years.
It’s going to get worse. Start planning for that.
Having 50mil+ households install and run a/c (they won't save it for just the heatwaves, not to mention production, delivery, installation factors), will kick out a fuck tonne more carbon & result in those hotter weeks being hotter and longer even sooner....soooo...are we meant to doom ourselves?! Then there's the issue of increased crop failures, droughts & wildfires etc. all adding to the cost of living.
How should we plan for all that? And the rest - more & heavier flooding etc.
Not if that installed A/C also functions as a heat pump that reduces gas furnace use in the winter. Especially if decent cooling also incentivizes better insulation (which would further reduce energy use at both extremes).
Carbon emissions from heating account for about 4 times as much as carbon emissions from cooling, worldwide. Replacing gas furnaces with heat pumps will greatly improve overall annual carbon emissions, even if they blast the A/C all summer.
Okay. You fix it your way.
No no no, you don't understand, the American said to just do what you want, obviously there's no need to think about it or apply logic if there's something out there you can have but don't currently own. OBVIOUSLY the American has thought ahead about the consequences for their actions and would never do anything to contribute to climate change
Okay. You fix it your way.
Sorry, were you fixing it?
On a micro level yes. None of us on lemmy are going to fix the macro issue. Nobody is out there doing a things to stop what we all know is coming. So just make yourself comfortable until the end.
Good luck.
What a defeatist viewpoint, but you're certainly welcome to it
Forgive me. You’re right. I just saw the news and I see now that you all are protesting by the tens of millions all of the stupid climate policies that led to this and are demanding change.
How dare and American suggest air conditioning.
Oh good, you saw the no kings protests, though I don't think there were that many people unfortunately. But I was one of them :)
This gets worse every year and you reverse them and get heat that's 3 times as power efficient.
You are objectively wrong. Subsidize heatpumps EU. Now. Everywhere.
As an European, we need to realise that AC also throws hot air if needed, it can be used as a substitute for radiators.
Technically it is more energy efficient that radiators at heating the place, so if you are mainly in a single room its cheaper to switch on the AC than the heating.
I'd argue about the cheaper point as that depends heavily on how the standard heating is organized.
Like living in an apartment complex with central heating and paying for it based on m² regardless of how much it's used and that isn't that rare based on multiple rental apartments I've rented over the years before buying my own apartment.
That system is mostly still done to force sharing of the heating load, because with a system that measures how much heating is used, it's completely possible for middle apartments to completely turn off heating and rely on surrounding apartments to keep them near 16-20c, depending on outer insulation of the apartment complex. Anything above 18c is comfortable and 16 is already tolerable if heating is expensive. While outer apartments need to compensate to keep their temperature in livable range.
Heating with AC would just add on top of already existing heating bill with a centralized heating system that cant be regulated.
ACs are very common in Norway, primarily for heating during winter. Also really nice to have during heatwaves too of course
AC in the US aren't (usually) heat pumps. The most common setup here is a furnace for heating (usually natural gas) plus AC, connected to the same central air unit. Heat pumps are pretty common, but not nearly as universal.
Just mentioning it because "AC" isn't usually used to refer to heat pumps here.
They're heat pumps by definition, just locked into operating one way
I'm aware, but when I talk to regular people here in the Midwest, they will not be thinking heat pumps if you call them AC. I'm just trying to make sure everyone is on the same page.
Also the entire electricity grid would explode if every household suddenly gained a 3kW load thats on half the day.
3kW for 2 portables or 500 watts for a proper pump that has the same real world cooling power as 2 portable ACs
I just cool the living room. I've also set up my PC there.
Most AC units are reversible these days, so they can also be used to heat your home in the winter, with energy use efficiencies unattainable by other means such as regular electric heating or fossil fuels. A good heatpump can heat for 5x as much energy as you put in. So you get 1000W of heat for every 200W you use. Besides, depending on your country's energy mix, it's probably also a lot less pollution and irritating gases sent in the atmosphere. It's an investment, sure, but one that would eventually pay off.
Only 5x when it's sorta warm out.
It's pretty common for people to already have a heating solution in place that can't practically be replaced with a reversible heat pump. District heating being a primary example here.
5000+