This isn’t one of those impossible mathematical equations or those interminable debates around free will versus determinism. Everyone knows the solution. And yet, governments and citizens alike sit tight and continue to allow tens of thousands of innocent people to die every year. What is the matter with them? To the average European, this may appear to be a description of American attitudes towards gun control. But to Americans, it could just as well be about Europeans and air conditioning.
Almost 47,000 people died of gun-related injuries in the United States in 2023, according to the latest available figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Such is the frequency of mass shootings that as of December 2024 the satirical newspaper, The Onion, has published the identical article and headline 38 times, quoting a fictional resident: “‘No Way To Prevent This,’ Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens”.
Europeans look on aghast. Around 7,000 people are killed1 in the EU by firearm each year, according to the Flemish Peace Institute. Note also that with a population of approximately 450 million, the bloc has around 100 million more people than the US. Of course, Americans are not preternaturally more violent than Europeans. The difference is that we have strict gun control laws and they don’t. But when it comes to heat, the tables are very much turned.
Around 48,000 people died of heat-related illnesses across Europe in 2023, according to a study in Nature Medicine. That compares with 2,325 in the US, based on researched published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. In fact, more than twice as many Europeans died of heat in 2023 as all Americans since 1999. Of course, Europeans are not genetically weaker than Americans. The difference this time is that they have air conditioning (AC) and, generally speaking, we don’t2.
Climate change and culture wars
Anything can be a culture war issue. Healthcare, censorship, even Cracker Barrel’s new logo design3. AC is no different. Opposition to the technology seems reasonable when taken at face value: AC requires lots of energy, carbon emissions are driving climate change, and so you risk entering a vicious cycle in which more AC units produce more emissions and so on. But this isn’t right.
First of all, air cooling systems, while spreading, currently contribute only 0.5% of energy consumption by European households, according to Eurostat. Second, AC units run on electricity, and electricity is the easiest of the big three (the other two being heat and transport) to decarbonise. Third — and I think most pertinently for climate hawks — if you want to build the broad coalition required to combat catastrophic warming, I’m not sure a policy of forcing grandma and grandpa to die of heatstroke is a winner.
There are some additional reasons why Europe is suffering so badly from heat that extend beyond the lack of AC. Our buildings are old. Our populations are old. Energy costs are high, and the historically mild climate made cooling systems seem unnecessary. But that era is over now. Europe is the fastest-warming continent on the planet. And while there are passive cooling solutions, such as urban tree planting, retrofitting buildings and painting more things white to relieve urban heat islands, these should be in addition to, not a substitute for, AC.
The good news is that there is no constitutional bar to rolling out cooling systems in Europe, unlike the second amendment in the US, which the Supreme Court appears to interpret as effectively banning most gun control. But until we get our collective acts together and AC is treated not as the luxury it used to be, but as the necessity it has become, I suggest we put our incomprehension at the latest mass shooting in America on ice.
This study is from 2015 but there is little indication that gun deaths have risen significantly since then
Around 90% coverage in the US versus 20% in the EU, with significant variation between member states
No, I hadn’t heard of the chain either until today