Air conditioning is... cool

No one judges you for cranking up the heating in winter. Why should summer be any different?

It is possible not to like tennis, but it is inconceivable not to open up your heart to Gaël Monfils. The Frenchman, now 39 and into his final season as a professional, is the ultimate showman. If Rafael Nadal was born to suffer and Roger Federer to croon, then Monfils was put on this Earth to delight with his sheer athleticism, electric chaos and gloriously unnecessary tricks.

Perhaps my favourite thing about Monfils is his nickname, “La Monf”, handed down to him by his Parisian friends. I don’t know how true this is, and it’s too good an origin story to fact check, but I once read that he got the feminine “la” rather than the masculine “le” because he played with such explosiveness and unpredictability that he is practically elemental — and forces of nature are, of course, feminine.

Gaël Monfils (Credit:Yann Caradec)

English doesn’t do grammatical gender in the way of French, Spanish or German.¹ Instead, it attempts to neatly polarise all manner of activities into good or bad, depending on education, class and the population density of one’s local area. I’m thinking:

• GLP-1s (cheating versus a legitimate medical intervention)

• Low-Traffic Neighbourhoods (promoting safer, cleaner streets versus entitled middle class NIMBYs)

• Working from home (unproductive shirkers versus modern flexibility).

But for the purposes of today’s newsletter (and London’s heatwave), it’s air conditioning.

Hot in Herre

I once got injured playing cricket. But when I got home from school to inform my mother and elicit some sympathy (and possibly a mini Magnum), she replied in pure American incredulity, “How the heck do you get injured playing cricket?” It’s a similar thing with this country and the Sun — despite the rumours, it can still kill you.

There were 1,504 heat-associated deaths in England last year, according to the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA). Unsurprisingly, the highest mortality rates were among those aged 85 and older, with incidents concentrated in London and the South East.

Last summer was also the warmest on record, while heat episodes are predicted to become more intense, longer and more frequent as a result of climate change. The UKHSA estimates there could be up to 10,000 deaths per year due to extreme heat by the 2050s, under a “high warming scenario without adaptation”.

The independent Committee on Climate Change has called heat waves the “single greatest climate threat to public health” and has explicitly acknowledged that provision of air conditioning is going to be “essential”, particularly in places where vulnerable people live, such as care homes and hospitals.

But this is not a treatise on housing policy (new-builds are important but the UK has among the oldest housing stock in Europe² so retrofitting is essential) or energy consumption (though it’s worth noting that air con is often considerably less energy-intensive than many forms of heating). It is about the apparent moral dichotomy.