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David Dodwell
Outside In
David Dodwell

Hot and bothered Europeans finally warm to air con

People are buying air conditioners despite the political awkwardness of relying on Chinese imports and worsening global warming

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A woman shields her face with a fan in the Trocadero square near the Eiffel Tower in Paris on June 20, during a heatwave affecting a large part of France. Photo: Reuters
David Dodwell
David Dodwell is a journalist focused on Hong Kong and China since the 1970s.
Experts agree that humans can only comfortably survive in the thermoneutral zone, a surprisingly narrow Goldilocks range between 17 and 24 degrees Celsius. This gives us a problem as climate change pushes up summer temperatures alarmingly, resulting in record heatwaves around the world.

Already, about 12 per cent of the Earth’s land area is uninhabitable due to deadly climate conditions. This is set to rise to over 45 per cent by 2100, with at least 44 per cent of the world’s population likely to become chronically stressed. The World Health Organization estimates that between 2000 and 2019, there were 489,000 heat-related deaths – 45 per cent in Asia and 36 per cent in Europe.

For perspective, that is a small number compared with the estimated 4.6 million annual deaths due to the cold. But heat deaths are expected to steadily rise, with hundreds of cities potentially becoming unliveable by the end of the century. This brings us to the pressing challenge of staying cool wherever we live on the planet and of, in more general terms, space cooling, which includes refrigeration.

As Europeans – who normally expect summer temperatures well below those we tolerate in Hong Kong – have sweltered in recent weeks with temperatures soaring past 40 degrees Celcius, this points towards a year of record heat, record heat mortality and questions about why Europe has so little air conditioning.
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