I was like, this is the dumbest thing I'm going to read today:
>For example, you can get a grant of up to £7,500 in the UK if you replace your fossil fuel heating system with a more environmentally friendly heat pump. But heat pumps that provide both heating and cooling aren’t currently eligible under this scheme.⁴
Then I got to this, and I was like, THIS is definitely the dumbest thing I'm going to read today:
>Window screens also aren’t really a thing in the UK
Well the point of the scheme is to replace the heat generator of wet (i.e. radiators/underfloor heating) systems. In the vast majority of houses that is a natural gas boiler, with the idea being that we become a less of a carbon emitter and also less reliant on global gas prices - a situation that at least half of the US doesn't seem to give a shit about.
Households are perfectly able to add air conditioning, but the cost of retrofitting for the sake of a week or so a year of discomfort isn't usually worth making.
The London Tube metro system is a different issue which requires significant engineering and cost interventions (some lines, including the most recent Elizabeth line do have it).
A heat pump that can provide cooling is mechanically almost identical to a heat pump that cannot provide cooling. The refrigeration cycle works both ways.
I'm pretty agnostic on whether the UK government should subsidize heat pumps of any type. Subsidizing only the nearly-identical, less-capable system is fucking dumb.
Vast majority of houses in the UK have hydronic heating systems, i.e. hot water radiators. If the heat source for these is changed to an air-water heat pump, the system won’t work for cooling - the delta T is insufficient and the condensation problems would be intractable. So these are heating only heat pumps. Hydronic heating is fairly common in the Northeast US. Usually when these homes convert to heat pumps they get mini split heat pumps and the residents see the new AC as a great benefit of the conversion. This would also be the way to go in SE England also.
The BBC article that Eli referenced on this is incredibly misleading and slanted. A good reminder of Gell-Mann amnesia for me.
But if you're going to go to all the expense of replacing a wet system with a heat pump, why should you have to install something to prevent it from running in both directions? Why not just have the simpler one with extra functionality?
Per a comment above by @Paul G, it's only replacing part of the old heating system. The existing radiators are still used for heat but are not set up to deliver cold water (they would condensate and cause major water damage). A mini-split unit would solve this but would presumably be more expensive to install.
That’s really dependent on where you live. My parents lived in the middle of fields in Somerset and my mother would conduct an annual fly-swatting campaign of epic proportions. My flat in Cambridge was on the 2nd floor among tree tops and the living room filled with all kinds of interesting bugs in the evening.
If you’re living in the south east among concrete, yes, it’s relatively dry and there’s nowhere for bugs to hatch. But the same is true for LA and they have screens.
British person here. We would have window screens by now, if we had problems with flying insects inside the house in Summer. But it's really not an issue. The spiders of Autumn however, oh my.........
Agreed on both points. First: this is not like places in Texas where if you open a door for 10 seconds eight mosquitos will fly in. We have our windows open nearly year-round (SoCal transplants, so we just can't give up our outside air flow); we mainly only have a problem with insects if someone leaves a light on in a room with an open window after nightfall.
Second, not sure where you live but here in south central England there are just so many spiders all year long. When I first moved here, it dawned on me why so many English children's stories feature spiders--they're ubiquitous!
There’s a few, but I’ve got more flies in my house in the states from leaving my sliders open for a few hours than I ever got in the UK with my windows open 24/7 during the summer.
Tbh, with the screens that’s largely downstream of how relatively recently this became a serious problem (the heat-pump stuff is just terrible policy).
The problem is that leftists (and alas that’s the UK these days) don’t see climate change as a technical problem, or an unfortunate side effect of progress. If they did they’d be all in on nuclear power. Instead, they see climate change as the result of sin — we have become overweening in our mastery of nature — and no solution is acceptable if it does not impose hardship and atonement.
What a wild way to turn around the problem climate change on the left and not the people denying its existence or saying it’s not worth attacking.
Almost all of the proposed solutions, like carbon credits, ARE technical solutions. You could debate technical reasons why some solutions are better than others. Or you could do this weird strawman where you make all environmentalists out to be quacky religious weirdos.
No, many solutions pushed by the Lefty Green are not really technical in the sense of coherent economics and business, they are highly oriented against consumption and very much Hair shirtism.
And for the record, my real job in real life is the financing of industrial scale Renewables. I have every economic interest, but there is a very clear reality to his complaint.
Well, first of all “merely religious hysteria” is your reframing - but I see this specifically in the various green left climate NGOs who have opposed permissive permitting reforms, focused on strangling off hydrocarbons via bans and command and control policies. In European context, the Greens are a fine example, as their ill-informed policies boht anti-nuclear as well as incoherently focused on prescriptive heat-pump and related mandates that were both technically and cost/economics infeasible in terms of the timelines.
“Religious hysteria” is the original posters framing… not my reframing
You can disagree with the utility of some of the policies promoted by environmental groups. And there’s a arguments to be had. For permitting for oil or gas pipeline infrastructure, to take your example, the argument against it is that it’s long-term infrastructure that makes fossil fuels cheaper over decades.
I don’t think that makes the people promoting that idea illogical.
Arguments against permitting is a matter of a quasi religious approach that effectively takes hydrocarbons as virtually sinful things, and a fundamentally anti-market conceptualisation of policy approaches. Command and control to strangle as a focus over rather making energy enablement of production cheaper and more effective is an approach that continues to generally signal anti-market orientation, distrustof the economics of renewables and equally in attention to real binding constraints (as like grid development).
And I note I did not use the word "illogical" - that is again your interpolation (like you jumped from religious to "religious hysteria" - which wasn't in the least in the poster's expression).
If you insist on continously setting up strawmen, well boring.
I don't believe in global warming; it's all a leftist plot to cause people hardship and find a way to redistribute income, IMO. The sooner we discard all this nonsense, which happily Trump is starting to do, the better for everyone and we can get back to normal business.
Thanx -- Well, the people castigating leftists probably generally don't believe in global warming, after all, so they wouldn't want to "do anything": it's strongly (if not completely) a red vs. blue issue.
Good question, and I'm sorry you asked it --- in fact I really think it's mainly unlikely to be man-made global warming. As to whether temperatures are rising, as they do sometimes, and sometimes the opposite, it has been rather unusually good gardening in Maryland the last five years ---- however, I'd have to see a lot better proof than I have so far, and not just in the area of the USA with the most leftwing chattering crowd.
I've never heard of someone saying the earth isn't warming. It's akin to saying the world is flat- do you believe that too?
I have heard people say: baseline is from the 1880s which is when the earth was coming out of a cooling, or that the sun has much more of an impact than manmade or that the measurement systems are better. I've also hear that the catastrophe argument is overblown and the impact won't be that huge.
In any case, you say sorry I asked like presuming that I give a damn if it was or was not warming from humans. I don't. I do care about clean air, pollution, lead in pipes and micro plastics in the sea that make it into our brain. Those externalities are worth curbing.
And yet you get to do this obfuscation of saying I think climate change is real but I don’t what to do anything because I hate climate change activists… which ends up in the same place as just denying its existence
Come on. Carbon credits are a paradigm example of hardship and atonement. Instead of pursuing abundance, you say, “Nope, you can’t have air conditioning unless you give up something else.” Get real.
Carbon credits are an example of using market forces to make producers account for the social cost of carbon. Thus instead of coal and gas being cheaper because they export the costs of the pollution to the future, you account for the cost now to promote alternatives. You can also slowly decrease the number of credits to manage the transition to a more carbon neutral system. Which presumably could include nuclear.
Seems pretty rational to me. Or you could not attack the rational basis and just say it’s semi religious.
And just saying, “yeah I said we should make nuclear plants” isn’t quite cutting it.
Agree there is a strong component of Lefties that really have Climate Change coded into Evils of Capitalism and are very much really about Hair Shirt for our sins against goodness, a kind of secular sins...
you blanketed a whole spectrum of progressive people because of the position of the Sierra club? I know a lot of people who were once against nuclear power, who are environmentally oriented and have changed their position not because they are thrilled about nuclear power, but because the situation has changed. It seems to be that there are people on the right who see climate change as a hoax and want to cancel the small progress we have made and go back to fossil fuels. Those aren’t lefties with their head in the sand. There are many groups of people who have a horse in this race pushing in different directions and on top of it all there is little money to invest in anything like the kind of investment needed, including in technological solutions that already exist.
For what it’s worth, I am an ardent environmentalist (though moderate-to-conservative on most issues) and I strongly support nuclear power. My sense is that support for nuclear is growing among the broader left-environmental movement, albeit slowly.
You seem to be unable to grasp the subtlety of a broad swath of peoples positions and fall back on generalised labels. I didn’t comment on the Sierra club either way and I don’t speak for this group you seem to have in your head called "leftists". Stay well.
“the OP observation on Lefty politics, NGOs and approach to hydrocarbons as treating climate as virtually religious sin does not make comment on whether carbon emissions are a problem driving climate change.”
No it’s actually a way to avoid that discussion, of a discussion about solutions. Since when I brought up cap and trade and the reasoning behind it, he didn’t attack the reasoning, he just said that the scheme was further evidence of treating carbon as sin.
Thats using religious language to avoid the argument.
Ha - the UK has seemed pretty right-wing lately, just minus the climate change denial for the most part. It's not as much of a partisan issue here; the claim that climate change isn't happening is just obviously bollocks to nearly everyone.
I do agree wholeheartedly that this is sometimes a failure of climate change thinking. But I'm not sure about the characterization of it being "the left". Most leftists don't blame individuals for climate change these days, they blame corporations/capitalism. It's a fairly common talking point.
People who are knowledgeable about climate change, whether they be left or right, are generally in support of nuclear power, at least when it comes to keeping existing plants open. It's my understanding though that experts agree we probably can't solve climate change only with a swivel to nuclear power for the simple reason that new nuclear plants are extremely difficult, expensive and time consuming to build. It ends up taking a really long time to break even, both economically and in terms of carbon footprint (manufacturing has a carbon footprint of its own after all). Ultimately stuff like wind and solar needs to be a much bigger piece of the puzzle to take on climate change.
The critique that AC is bad because it's more affordable for rich people is the dumbest of the lot. Literally *everything* is more affordable for rich people!
I’m sorry, but this is such a stereotypical example of an American being unable to comprehend other ways of life besides what is common in America. As an American myself, I’m ashamed that my country doesn’t spend more time looking at how other countries operate and seeing if we can adopt some of their life styles to improve our cities, whether that be for environmental, traffic, or economic purposes. I’m not saying that “X country is perfect, we should copy everything they are doing” but we shouldn’t dismiss differences as “annoyances” or “lower quality of life”.
>I’m ashamed that my country doesn’t spend more time looking at how other countries operate...<
I think there are plenty of things Americans can learn from foreigners when it comes to sensible urban living. Better accommodation of cycling is a good one. Or robust transit. Or sane gun control. Or Tokyo-style construction permitting.
But how would suffering in the heat help us? Or help Brits for that matter?
Surely it's smarter just to push for abundant, green electricity.
It’s a common position of the whining class from other nations to try and turn their irrelevance/lower standards of living - as compared to the US - into a badge of honor. When you have nothing else to offer, point to your ability to suffer and endure unnecessary hardship as evidence of your superiority.
Strong “I would never date Margot Robbie anyway, she’s too fat for me” vibes.
Well.... what one is acclimatized to in terms of temperature is something that 's not just medical - and I find a lot of Americans complaints on AC to be from being acclimatized to indoor AC temps that end up requiring you to wear a sweater inside!
There's certainly not just pure exaggeration but there's also a serious component of exaggeration from Americans versus if one is acclimatized and in habit of not so fierce ACing.
Ok but did you read the piece? Lack of AC in UK is killing tons of people and is certainly rather be in a country that “over-ACs” but is working in green energy solutions, than a country basically outlawing AC to save the environment
Ha, true! I have to take a sweater to all stores and restaurants all summer: it's such a problem I've kept one in the car in case I forget. Commercial establishments are often wildly over-air-conditioned here.
The British are famous for going into other countries and telling them how to do things. What, they can tell Indians not to burn their widows, but we can’t tell them not to broil their grandparents?
This article is just proof of the provincial mindset of the author. I was really shocked to find something like this on Silver Bulletin. It's a textbook example of how a narrow data journalism approach can go wrong, if it doesn't take into account history and ways of living, that differ from the one the writer experienced while growing up.
@Silver Bulletin: Please keep to the stuff you really know about. There's enough badly researched stuff on the internet already.
It goes both ways, though, there's clearly some things Europeans should try to copy from America. The AC skepticism doesn't really make sense. At least with some of the other nanny state things like knife and soda limits you can kind of see where they are getting at, even if it seems ridiculous.
The fear of air conditioning is exclusively much a European thing. It's normal / desirable to Indians, Japanese, Brazilians, pretty much everywhere else in the world. Lee Kuan Yew called it the "most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history" and said it "changed the nature of civilization"
Excellent, very interesting. One thing you overlooked, heat is one thing if it is dry, but Great Britain is an island surrounded by sea and in general at sea level and is therefore always quite humid. Heat and humidity is much worse than dry heat.
I would also like to see the article acknowledge that although hot days in the UK are on the increase, there are still FAR fewer hot days than in the U.S. I’m currently in Florida and without AC it would be unbearable. In London it’s exceptionally rare to need AC in September, let alone October. That will change but only very gradually.
I also felt your article was extremely mean-spirited in not mentioning any of the advantages the UK has over the U.S. Better quality of life in lots of non-financial ways - such as life expectancy (around 3 years higher in the UK), better public transport, much lower crime (murder rate 5 times higher in the U.S. than London), and of course a far more efficient healthcare system that is free at the point of delivery to everyone. On the downside, as Bill Bryson pointed out, I am enjoying visiting a country where ice isn’t treated as a luxury item.
You and Phoenix. That's what they like to say, no problem, it's a DRY heat. Lemme tell you, 114 regularly is too hot for humans to live in whatever the humidity! Maybe gila monsters and rattlesnakes, that's about all.
This is a big issue, especially in London. The heat problem tends to be worst in new-build flats (which sounds like where you were living?), because they are designed to retain as much heat as possible. Older buildings are often better, because they were designed and built with air-flow in mind (but this means they are condemned as ‘energy inefficient’).
I actually lived in the UK for a long time and my husband was born and raised there as well. I’m pretty willing to think critically about things, hence why I felt this author raised some good concerns and points I hadn’t considered before. I’m also someone who has resisted AC for many years. You’re jumping to many conclusions based on nowt about me and my “faculties”.
I also lived in Boston, US for nearly a decade without AC going through many, many long heatwaves of 32c+ temps that even today are quite rare in the UK. It was pretty brutal, so I’m not going to lie having air conditioned places to go elsewhere helped. Something that the UK can often lack. My house in the UK managed to stay cool enough due to the location and the fact that the way it faced didn’t result in a lot of direct sunlight, so we never felt the need to use more than a fan in summer. Most people probably don’t need AC, but the point is that we cannot deny that climate change does require us to think about the effects of heat.
The UK certainly has its share of problems but lack of screens on the windows in Southwark (where I also live) has never been the problem for me the author struggled with and I don’t have air-conditioning. Climate change is predicted to bring worryingly warmer temperatures to the UK and the response of Southwark Council to find environmentally friendly solutions strikes me as a much saner alternative to just vastly increasing the demand for energy and all of the complications that massive use of air conditioning would bring which is not to say that the tube won’t benefit in the future from air-conditioning and various parts of the London transport system this is already happening. but the author’s suggesting that wholesale use of air-conditioning is a one stop solution as it’s done in the US ignores the host of environmental complications that would bring.
There is no doubt that the UK economy has stagnated with, like the US, the better off continue to become better off while the poor are getting poor and the middle class is declining. This isn’t news to anyone but the author felt a need to point it out anyway while the author failed to point out that much of the growth of income in the US has been very selective. A major factor in the current US political environment.
Aross the UK political spectrum from the failed government of Liz Truss to the current government almost everyone recognises that the solution is growth. The problem is that there aren’t simple, quick fixes to a problem that goes back through many governments. So pointing out the growth of income disparity between the US and the UK is something the author could have learned by watching five minutes of news on the BBC but does nothing in the way of insight into the country.
While Americans are used to large refrigerators and freezers most Europeans do have smaller refrigerators and smaller flat and as a result, they don’t do the weekly massive food shopping at mega supermarkets that Americans do thus the need for large refrigerators and freezers.Instead, they do more frequent shopping. At least where I live (which is where the author also lived ) it’s simple to order groceries online and have them delivered the next day if needs be.
And just to finish as an American who has lived in London for several decades what struck me about the article was how little the author seems to have understood life in a different culture.
If understanding life in a different culture means thinking hand-delivered groceries is an appropriate solution to one's fridge being too small (rather than simply having a larger fridge), count me in with the author as an unsophisticated rube.
First, I didn’t say anything in desperation. I’m not sure I understand your point, I’m not sure you understand your point. I think you make a very unsupportable generalised statement in saying the UK is in technological irrelevance, would you like to discuss that with Dennis Hasabis or Oxford University where the Covid vaccine was developed? I have no idea what social irrelevance means. Personally i don’t do any work managing climate change other than on a personal level, but you may have noticed that there is a whole swath of the political spectrum in the UK who see climate change as a hoax and want us to go back to fossil fuels. Are you one of them?
Using AC is fine. Setting it to 68 degrees in the summer is the problem...here in the USA. I'm typically colder at work in the summer than I am in the winter. I have a small heater at my desk that gets used too frequently in the summer! 😖
While 68 degrees is on the chilly side, I'd rather work in an office with the AC set to 68 degrees than one set to 75 degrees. Most offices will let you wear a sweater or a jacket if you're too cold. Most offices won't let you take off your shirt if you're too hot.
75 degrees is fine if you're on the beach in a swimsuit, but that attire would violate most workplace dress codes. (Swimming pools and strip clubs excepted.)
Personally, I think 72 degrees is the sweet spot, but for the reasons above, I'd take cooler over hotter.
I knew you only considered London before reading the first word. Hint: it's the same as assuming Washington insiders know the opinions of everyone in the US. Foolishness.
A/C is NOT a big political issue across the UK. You'd be laughed at for suggesting it in most of the country. Yes in London because it's a couple of degrees hotter than everywhere else, overcrowded and full of cheaply built poorly designed flats that cost more than large homes elsewhere. So the issue is not A/C, the issue is the economic imbalance that encourages the poorly designed housing.
Try Scotland, the North of England etc and try talking about the politics of A/C. You'll get material for a better article about the exquisite use of language the people use to mock you. (See Trump in this regard.)
And as for talking about heat related deaths across all of Europe as relevant to an article about the UK? It's as stupid as comparing bear-related deaths in the US with cat-related deaths in Spain.
This sort of stuff does not support the credibility of any substance hoping to be considered competent at analytical thinking.
And as for knives. I manage to buy good quality kitchen knives easily. Even online. I've gifted most of my children good quality kitchen knives because they all like to cook.
Having to verify I'm 18 or over is not some huge difficulty. It might surprise Americans who expects pre-teens to be allowed to buy guns unmonitored but its really not an issue for sensible people.
That's both silly and pretty terrible to constrain kitchen knives. Let's STOP with the government control, control, control! I replaced all my knives a few years ago, cost me thousands, I had a great time online shopping, and I was free to do it without government interference. We need to have that for essentially everything. Always.
You are not constrained from buying kitchen knives. Children are.
Do you demand that children, however young, be allowed to purchase large sharp knives? As a parent would you give young children your large sharp kitchen knives unsupervised? Now that would be silly and irresponsible.
Consider the 'benefits' the US gets from having no constraints on children obtaining guns? You'll not get UK citizens to agree with you on that. We've seen the pigs ear you country has made because of your constitution.
No, the attack is made on EVERYONE. I know, because even here from time to time some idiot company decides to ask everyone who buys X to swear they are not children: are over 21, I guess. They just ask our birthdates and then no doubt collect that to datamine us. Probably not, I'm just being bitter. Dick's Sporting Goods asked my husband who was buying a knife to scale fish his birthdate, said they wouldn't sell it to "minors." Trust me, he so very does not look like a minor. Pretty seriously stupid. Rite Aide was asking everyone in my county at least, I don't know about the rest of the country, birthdates if we tried to buy a common brand of cold medicine (Nyquil)! Doesn't matter how old we LOOK -- I raised holy hell about that in the store and have resolved never to allow that again. I would go into a Rite Aide the next couple years everytime I needed that stuff just to practice refusing: they would use the cashier's birthday. It was terrible and wrong ---- I've been cheering Rite Aide's corporate demise thru bankruptcy all year. Great big dark empty warehouse, no customers, invading people's privacy for no reason at all. No other stores do that. Crazy, and now the government is doing this stuff in Britain. Very sad.
In which case keep your objections to the uS and continue to drive it down
Don't insult other countries who think children with lethal weapons is a bad idea.
It's only an attack on everyone if you're paranoid enough to consider it an attack. In practice it is not even a minor inconvenience to prove you are over 18.
In the UK it's required to buy alcohol. Do you also think young children should be free to buy liquor so as not to be an attack on you?
I doubt you'll take the advice but ... opening less time complaining about everything and simply getting on with enjoying living works as a lifestyle.
As an American in Switzerland for 10+ years (a country with comfortably richer citizens than the US on almost every measure), I can say quite a few of these differences are very conscious choices or simply preferences rather than GDP per capita mandated austerity measures. The author seems to assume the rest of the world shares his lifestyle preferences. Particularly things like stores being closed on Sunday, they aren't closed because they can't afford to be open, they are closed because of popular rules restricting which stores can open when. While I admit sooner or later AC will be more prevalent in europe, not having AC is and will continue to be a great forcing function for producing better insulated houses and less energy intensive cooling measures. The fact they are not allowed in most Swiss dwellings again does not represent the country's poverty but rather preferences. Finally on dryers, most europeans simply do not like them and what they do to clothing.
They need dryers in England, though: all that rain. I used clotheslines much of my life, and even in dry, sunny America, dryers are better (speaking as one who agrees that the smell of freshly line-dried laundry is wonderful!).
I am a Brit who has lived in the USA for 24 years but has a place in London so am familiar with both countries and feel affection and loyalty to both. I agree with many things you say but take issue with others. Notably comparing gun deaths to heat related deaths. You say there are more heat related deaths in Europe than gun deaths in the US. In 2024 there were between 44,000 and 45,000 guns deaths and over 62,000 heat related deaths in Europe. However, and it's big however, the population of the US -340 million - is less than half that of Europe -744 million. Throwing out statements like that diminishes your credibility.
Eli compared deaths per 100,000 people, not total deaths. The source he cited shows that the European heat related death rate per 100,000 people is higher than the US gun death rate per 100,000 people.
Here is the relevant passage from the citation:
With this rise in temperature — and the aging of the European population — has come a rise in preventable death. Estimates of heat-related mortality vary, but the most commonly cited number is 175,000 annually across the entire region. Given that Europe has a population of about 745 million, this is a death rate of about 23.5 per 100,000 people per year. For comparison, the U.S. death rate from firearms is about 13.7 per 100,000.
There's often a significant difference between "getting caught in the crossfire" and "being an innocent bystander." The distinction is well worth thinking about.
Firearm homicides in the US are around 18,000 not 45,000. The number you refer to is mostly suicides, along with a few accidents, plus homicides. The choice of method for suicide is a function of what's available. In Hong Kong, the leading method of suicide is jumping off tall buildings.
While it's easier to find an alternative weapon for suicide, suicide method matters a lot in terms of how many attempts become actual suicide. I don't know about other countries, but in the US, women make the majority of suicide attempts but more men die from suicide than women do. It's because men are more likely to shoot themselves and give themselves much less chance to be saved compared to women, who usually choose to overdose on medication as their method.
It's not but it's also not a great argument in favor of EU style gun control. People in countries with strict gun control still find ways to kill themselves and in fact some countries with extreme gun control policies like Japan have a higher per capita rate of suicide than the US does. Gun control might cause a short term drop in suicide rates but over time people would go back to feeling comfortable killing themselves other ways. The solution to suicide is to treat the person and to create a kinder society that does its best to make sure everyone has what they need to thrive. In a country as rich as the US there is no reason that we can't ensure everyone lives a life of dignity and hope, even if they fall onto hard times.
I would argue its even less if you want to analyze gun deaths by people that legally had there firearms. Stats indicate that at least 60% of the gun murders are by people that had a weapon illegally. Gun control isn't going to stop criminals from procuring weapons; the US is a large country with massive borders and as we've seen with the drug trade if people want something there will be other criminals willing to provide those services. Which brings the number of people killed by someone with legal ownership to about 7500; that is the upper cap on the possible lives saved by gun control and it would take a lot of control to get there. The number still sucks and as gun owner myself I'm happy to discuss options to improve that but we need to be accurate in our discussion and not inflammatory. There's lots of things we permit that kill more than 7500 people a year, including popular stuff like alcohol. Even if you don't personally value the ability to own a gun, I would argue that in a free society there has to be a limit to the number of things we use the full force of gov't to control, even if there is a cost in lives because empowering the gov't to control things down to that level eventually leads to authoritarianism. Personally I suspect we'd reduce the number of gun related deaths in the US more with medicare for all than we'd do with any of the control policies being discussed. So we have options that we've not even tried.
In terms of its impact on friends and loved ones? No. It may even be more tragic. In terms of its impact on people that are paranoid they’ll immediately get shot if they walk outside in the US? Absolutely. Nobody walks around in fear of getting suicided.
Sooo I’m not here to pile on as many commenters seem to be doing, because I think your piece is valid and raises some good points.
Wanna start by saying that I’m European (Greek) and have lived in various countries in Europe (France, Italy, Spain, and Greece), and have lived in the U.S. for over a decade (New York). I have only ever lived in one apartment without AC (in France). I think there’s a few things that you ignore in your piece that I want to raise:
1. Technical feasibility. A loooot of buildings in Europe are old, and getting AC installed isn’t that easy. Your best bet is getting one of those units that basically blocks one of your windows and cycles air using a tube that is hanging out of the window. This is ugly, loud, and then blocks you from being able to use this window the rest of the time. Any type of centralized deployment is difficult to
do without a full gut renovation of older buildings.
2. Cost: As you touched upon, running the AC is expensive! My sister lives in the UK (Glasgow, medical school) and her monthly electricity bill is more than triple what I pay in New York. And that’s without AC! As you correctly identified, salaries are lowering and Brits have less purchasing power. Factor in the cost of purchasing + running that AC and you might be looking at 1K GBP in your first year - that’s a lot when you consider where UK salaries are.
3. Inconvenience vs genuine risk: A lot of young people (me, my sister, you) choose to forgo AC for these reasons - and we’re unlikely to die in a 28C heatwave. However, there should be a concerted effort to help older people install and run ACs.
4. Energy supply: if everyone took your advice and suddenly installed AC, the grid wouldn’t be able to cope! There’s a mismatch here between government policy + individual choice, and they need to go hand in hand.
5. Learning to live with the heat: I am in no way going to be as extreme as other commenters on this point. I have lived through heatwaves in my little French flat and it’s not fun. But for the day to day, coming from Greece where it easily gets past 100F in the summer (and where we all have AC!), a key thing is learning to live WITH the heat. You won’t catch a Greek outside at 2pm on a hot day. We search for shade everywhere, we stay hydrated, and we try to do most physically demanding activities in the early morning and evening.
Anywho, all of which is to say I agree, AC is somewhat an issue, but I’m not sure there’s a straightforward solution.
Window units are amazing. I'm running one now and I love it. It's not ugly at all, I don't mind losing one window, and the white noise keeps out background sound and helps me sleep.
As an American who has lived in the UK for 40 years now (on and off) I really appreciate most of the things Eli complains about. Why? Because they're about saving energy. About avoiding and reducing waste. About not embracing a spirit of entitlement. Many of us know how to keep our homes cool without AC, I haven't used a clothes dryer for as long as I can remember and I'm very happy to deal with minor inconveniences (you have to go to a kitchen shop to buy a good kitchen knife, boo hoo) to support efforts to make life safer for everyone. As for the public transport, I love it - I can get from west London to east London in approx 13 minutes in a system that is safe and fast and, yes, air conditioned.
"AC uses electricity, which — despite the UK’s plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 — mostly still comes from fossil fuels."
The link in this passage connects to a chart showing the overall energy use in the UK, which is mostly fossil fuels, because of oil in transportation and natural gas for home heating. But if we look at electricity use by source in the UK (in 2024 from Our World in Data), 30.5% comes from fossil fuels (almost all natural gas, slivers of oil and coal); 31.5% comes from wind and solar, 14.5% from nuclear and hydro. The UK has net imports of electricity amounting to 10.5% of production, mostly from France (largely nuclear) and Norway (largely hydro), so that would count mostly as renewable. The remaining 13% is listed as "other renewables" but is mostly biomass burning -- largely wood pellets from North America burning at repurposed coal plants, such as Drax's Yorkshire power plant. This is not technically fossil fuel, but it's the most emission-intensive supposedly renewable way to generate electricity.
So adding the 31.5% wind/solar to the 14.5% nuclear/hydro to 3/4 of the 10.5% imported nuclear/hydro gets to about 54% renewable, not including the biomass burning.
There’s an elephant in the room that Americans sometimes miss in this discussion: the price of electricity. The average US electricity rate is 17.47¢ per kWh, while in the UK it’s 26.35p – roughly 35.31¢ at current exchange rates.
If you run an air conditioner for 800 hours a year, that would cost an American just over $500, but a British or Irish person more than $1,000. For many households, especially given the 60% lower rate of AC ownership in the UK, that extra £400 a year simply isn’t affordable.
So even without government discouragement or environmental pressure, you wouldn’t see the same rollout. People simply can’t afford the running costs. The same applies to tumble dryers and other energy-heavy appliances – usage patterns follow price signals as much as climate.
Would someone in the UK need to run an air conditioner for 800 hours per year? 2025 apparently had 25 days of uncomfortably warm weather in London; that would be 600 hours of cooling if used 24 hours on each of those days.
Homes in the UK tend to be smaller than homes in the US, so that would also be a savings. Google's AI suggests that the price to cool an average UK home for 600 hours would range from £158 to £360, and less if owners choose to run the system for only part of the day during warm spells.
That assumes people would only use AC when it’s exceptionally hot. But that’s not how people behave. Just as people don’t only turn on their central heating during a cold snap, they wouldn’t limit AC to the handful of official “heatwave” days.
The average comfort range in the UK is around 18-21°C, which is well below the formal heatwave threshold. When I worked in a Belfast office with AC, it ran more or less constantly from May through September during working hours. And Belfast is several degrees cooler than London. Once people have it, they use it to maintain comfort, not merely to survive extremes.
So yes, minimalist use would be cheaper, but I doubt that’s how most households would operate. The same pattern shows up with tumble dryers: people buy them for convenience, then use them far more often than strictly necessary.
And this isn’t just about air conditioning. It’s the same issue holding back electrification more broadly. You can subsidise heat pumps, EVs, or electric cookers all you want, but if electricity remains backbreakingly expensive, uptake among lower-income households will stall. Until electricity is affordable, electrification will remain a middle-class luxury rather than a universal transition.
This of course is the key, power costs, what could explain the difference. So to all those berating UK leftism, although I'm a Scots, let me conform to stereotype and say it's down to US imperialism. Of both parties. Now I'm off to freeze to death in comfort.
I was like, this is the dumbest thing I'm going to read today:
>For example, you can get a grant of up to £7,500 in the UK if you replace your fossil fuel heating system with a more environmentally friendly heat pump. But heat pumps that provide both heating and cooling aren’t currently eligible under this scheme.⁴
Then I got to this, and I was like, THIS is definitely the dumbest thing I'm going to read today:
>Window screens also aren’t really a thing in the UK
Someone save this poor culture from itself.
Well the point of the scheme is to replace the heat generator of wet (i.e. radiators/underfloor heating) systems. In the vast majority of houses that is a natural gas boiler, with the idea being that we become a less of a carbon emitter and also less reliant on global gas prices - a situation that at least half of the US doesn't seem to give a shit about.
Households are perfectly able to add air conditioning, but the cost of retrofitting for the sake of a week or so a year of discomfort isn't usually worth making.
The London Tube metro system is a different issue which requires significant engineering and cost interventions (some lines, including the most recent Elizabeth line do have it).
So you can make a good choice on the merits, but if you don't do it for pure-of-heart reasons, it doesn't count.
Sorry, that's idiotic.
Are you suggesting the government should subsidise air conditioning in the UK?
A heat pump that can provide cooling is mechanically almost identical to a heat pump that cannot provide cooling. The refrigeration cycle works both ways.
I'm pretty agnostic on whether the UK government should subsidize heat pumps of any type. Subsidizing only the nearly-identical, less-capable system is fucking dumb.
Vast majority of houses in the UK have hydronic heating systems, i.e. hot water radiators. If the heat source for these is changed to an air-water heat pump, the system won’t work for cooling - the delta T is insufficient and the condensation problems would be intractable. So these are heating only heat pumps. Hydronic heating is fairly common in the Northeast US. Usually when these homes convert to heat pumps they get mini split heat pumps and the residents see the new AC as a great benefit of the conversion. This would also be the way to go in SE England also.
The BBC article that Eli referenced on this is incredibly misleading and slanted. A good reminder of Gell-Mann amnesia for me.
If people are dying of heat exhaustion, then pretty clearly yes.
I agree. Poor people are dying of heat exhaustion in the US too, and our government should subsidise air conditioning for them.
I don't know the situation in the US, but yes. If people are dying of heat exhaustion the government should subsidize ac
It is very silly of you to discount reported statistics in your very first sentence and then try to build your argument on reported statistics.
But if you're going to go to all the expense of replacing a wet system with a heat pump, why should you have to install something to prevent it from running in both directions? Why not just have the simpler one with extra functionality?
Per a comment above by @Paul G, it's only replacing part of the old heating system. The existing radiators are still used for heat but are not set up to deliver cold water (they would condensate and cause major water damage). A mini-split unit would solve this but would presumably be more expensive to install.
That makes a lot more sense.
Noble sacrifice for the omnicause.
There are no bugs. I lived there for years with my screenless windows open and did not get one mosquito bite.
That’s really dependent on where you live. My parents lived in the middle of fields in Somerset and my mother would conduct an annual fly-swatting campaign of epic proportions. My flat in Cambridge was on the 2nd floor among tree tops and the living room filled with all kinds of interesting bugs in the evening.
If you’re living in the south east among concrete, yes, it’s relatively dry and there’s nowhere for bugs to hatch. But the same is true for LA and they have screens.
True - anywhere near livestock and there will be flies, and the countryside has more bugs than the city.
We have bugs all over in LA.
There must be flies, moths and cockroaches (though not the flying ones commonly seen in warmer climates).
British person here. We would have window screens by now, if we had problems with flying insects inside the house in Summer. But it's really not an issue. The spiders of Autumn however, oh my.........
Agreed on both points. First: this is not like places in Texas where if you open a door for 10 seconds eight mosquitos will fly in. We have our windows open nearly year-round (SoCal transplants, so we just can't give up our outside air flow); we mainly only have a problem with insects if someone leaves a light on in a room with an open window after nightfall.
Second, not sure where you live but here in south central England there are just so many spiders all year long. When I first moved here, it dawned on me why so many English children's stories feature spiders--they're ubiquitous!
There’s a few, but I’ve got more flies in my house in the states from leaving my sliders open for a few hours than I ever got in the UK with my windows open 24/7 during the summer.
Tbh, with the screens that’s largely downstream of how relatively recently this became a serious problem (the heat-pump stuff is just terrible policy).
The problem is that leftists (and alas that’s the UK these days) don’t see climate change as a technical problem, or an unfortunate side effect of progress. If they did they’d be all in on nuclear power. Instead, they see climate change as the result of sin — we have become overweening in our mastery of nature — and no solution is acceptable if it does not impose hardship and atonement.
What a wild way to turn around the problem climate change on the left and not the people denying its existence or saying it’s not worth attacking.
Almost all of the proposed solutions, like carbon credits, ARE technical solutions. You could debate technical reasons why some solutions are better than others. Or you could do this weird strawman where you make all environmentalists out to be quacky religious weirdos.
No, many solutions pushed by the Lefty Green are not really technical in the sense of coherent economics and business, they are highly oriented against consumption and very much Hair shirtism.
And for the record, my real job in real life is the financing of industrial scale Renewables. I have every economic interest, but there is a very clear reality to his complaint.
Specifically which groups and which solutions are you decrying as not technical and merely religious hysteria?
Well, first of all “merely religious hysteria” is your reframing - but I see this specifically in the various green left climate NGOs who have opposed permissive permitting reforms, focused on strangling off hydrocarbons via bans and command and control policies. In European context, the Greens are a fine example, as their ill-informed policies boht anti-nuclear as well as incoherently focused on prescriptive heat-pump and related mandates that were both technically and cost/economics infeasible in terms of the timelines.
“Religious hysteria” is the original posters framing… not my reframing
You can disagree with the utility of some of the policies promoted by environmental groups. And there’s a arguments to be had. For permitting for oil or gas pipeline infrastructure, to take your example, the argument against it is that it’s long-term infrastructure that makes fossil fuels cheaper over decades.
I don’t think that makes the people promoting that idea illogical.
I didn’t say “hysteria”, by the way.
Arguments against permitting is a matter of a quasi religious approach that effectively takes hydrocarbons as virtually sinful things, and a fundamentally anti-market conceptualisation of policy approaches. Command and control to strangle as a focus over rather making energy enablement of production cheaper and more effective is an approach that continues to generally signal anti-market orientation, distrustof the economics of renewables and equally in attention to real binding constraints (as like grid development).
And I note I did not use the word "illogical" - that is again your interpolation (like you jumped from religious to "religious hysteria" - which wasn't in the least in the poster's expression).
If you insist on continously setting up strawmen, well boring.
I don't believe in global warming; it's all a leftist plot to cause people hardship and find a way to redistribute income, IMO. The sooner we discard all this nonsense, which happily Trump is starting to do, the better for everyone and we can get back to normal business.
Hey I think you’re wrong and the evidence is against you, but at least you’re straight forward and honest. So I appreciate that.
The people I’ve been commenting back and forth with seem to prefer castigating leftists rather than doing anything about climate change.
Thanx -- Well, the people castigating leftists probably generally don't believe in global warming, after all, so they wouldn't want to "do anything": it's strongly (if not completely) a red vs. blue issue.
Do you mean man made global warming or are you saying that temperatures aren't rising?
Good question, and I'm sorry you asked it --- in fact I really think it's mainly unlikely to be man-made global warming. As to whether temperatures are rising, as they do sometimes, and sometimes the opposite, it has been rather unusually good gardening in Maryland the last five years ---- however, I'd have to see a lot better proof than I have so far, and not just in the area of the USA with the most leftwing chattering crowd.
I've never heard of someone saying the earth isn't warming. It's akin to saying the world is flat- do you believe that too?
I have heard people say: baseline is from the 1880s which is when the earth was coming out of a cooling, or that the sun has much more of an impact than manmade or that the measurement systems are better. I've also hear that the catastrophe argument is overblown and the impact won't be that huge.
In any case, you say sorry I asked like presuming that I give a damn if it was or was not warming from humans. I don't. I do care about clean air, pollution, lead in pipes and micro plastics in the sea that make it into our brain. Those externalities are worth curbing.
You never heard anyone say the earth ISN'T warming?
I'd say you need to get out more -----
There is pretty solid data :
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1029/2024EA003856
https://airs.jpl.nasa.gov/news/288/confirming-a-critical-foundation-of-the-science-of-global-warming/
Now whether the situation will continue and at what pace, or reverse based on sun spots or divine intervention may be up for grabs.
You clearly must not be located in the UK, then.
And yet.
And yet you get to do this obfuscation of saying I think climate change is real but I don’t what to do anything because I hate climate change activists… which ends up in the same place as just denying its existence
You didn’t notice me mentioning nuclear?
Come on. Carbon credits are a paradigm example of hardship and atonement. Instead of pursuing abundance, you say, “Nope, you can’t have air conditioning unless you give up something else.” Get real.
Carbon credits are an example of using market forces to make producers account for the social cost of carbon. Thus instead of coal and gas being cheaper because they export the costs of the pollution to the future, you account for the cost now to promote alternatives. You can also slowly decrease the number of credits to manage the transition to a more carbon neutral system. Which presumably could include nuclear.
Seems pretty rational to me. Or you could not attack the rational basis and just say it’s semi religious.
And just saying, “yeah I said we should make nuclear plants” isn’t quite cutting it.
And…how do you feel about nuclear?
Agree there is a strong component of Lefties that really have Climate Change coded into Evils of Capitalism and are very much really about Hair Shirt for our sins against goodness, a kind of secular sins...
I’m wondering, how many "leftists" you’ve questioned? and what exactly your definition of a leftist is.
All right, what’s the Sierra Club’s position on nuclear power? (You don’t have to answer, I just looked it up myself.)
you blanketed a whole spectrum of progressive people because of the position of the Sierra club? I know a lot of people who were once against nuclear power, who are environmentally oriented and have changed their position not because they are thrilled about nuclear power, but because the situation has changed. It seems to be that there are people on the right who see climate change as a hoax and want to cancel the small progress we have made and go back to fossil fuels. Those aren’t lefties with their head in the sand. There are many groups of people who have a horse in this race pushing in different directions and on top of it all there is little money to invest in anything like the kind of investment needed, including in technological solutions that already exist.
If Sierra Club is suddenly persona non grata among leftists, I am delighted to hear it.
For what it’s worth, I am an ardent environmentalist (though moderate-to-conservative on most issues) and I strongly support nuclear power. My sense is that support for nuclear is growing among the broader left-environmental movement, albeit slowly.
You seem to be unable to grasp the subtlety of a broad swath of peoples positions and fall back on generalised labels. I didn’t comment on the Sierra club either way and I don’t speak for this group you seem to have in your head called "leftists". Stay well.
“the OP observation on Lefty politics, NGOs and approach to hydrocarbons as treating climate as virtually religious sin does not make comment on whether carbon emissions are a problem driving climate change.”
No it’s actually a way to avoid that discussion, of a discussion about solutions. Since when I brought up cap and trade and the reasoning behind it, he didn’t attack the reasoning, he just said that the scheme was further evidence of treating carbon as sin.
Thats using religious language to avoid the argument.
Sounds like I hit a nerve. Sorry for the pain.
My nerves are fine. As is my atonement for man’s modern sin.
Ha - the UK has seemed pretty right-wing lately, just minus the climate change denial for the most part. It's not as much of a partisan issue here; the claim that climate change isn't happening is just obviously bollocks to nearly everyone.
I do agree wholeheartedly that this is sometimes a failure of climate change thinking. But I'm not sure about the characterization of it being "the left". Most leftists don't blame individuals for climate change these days, they blame corporations/capitalism. It's a fairly common talking point.
I also don't think leftists or progressives as a whole are generally anti-nuclear. It has slightly more support amongst Republicans, but ultimately Democrats are pretty close to the same levels of support: https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/10/16/support-for-expanding-nuclear-power-is-up-in-both-parties-since-2020/
People who are knowledgeable about climate change, whether they be left or right, are generally in support of nuclear power, at least when it comes to keeping existing plants open. It's my understanding though that experts agree we probably can't solve climate change only with a swivel to nuclear power for the simple reason that new nuclear plants are extremely difficult, expensive and time consuming to build. It ends up taking a really long time to break even, both economically and in terms of carbon footprint (manufacturing has a carbon footprint of its own after all). Ultimately stuff like wind and solar needs to be a much bigger piece of the puzzle to take on climate change.
The critique that AC is bad because it's more affordable for rich people is the dumbest of the lot. Literally *everything* is more affordable for rich people!
I’m sorry, but this is such a stereotypical example of an American being unable to comprehend other ways of life besides what is common in America. As an American myself, I’m ashamed that my country doesn’t spend more time looking at how other countries operate and seeing if we can adopt some of their life styles to improve our cities, whether that be for environmental, traffic, or economic purposes. I’m not saying that “X country is perfect, we should copy everything they are doing” but we shouldn’t dismiss differences as “annoyances” or “lower quality of life”.
>I’m ashamed that my country doesn’t spend more time looking at how other countries operate...<
I think there are plenty of things Americans can learn from foreigners when it comes to sensible urban living. Better accommodation of cycling is a good one. Or robust transit. Or sane gun control. Or Tokyo-style construction permitting.
But how would suffering in the heat help us? Or help Brits for that matter?
Surely it's smarter just to push for abundant, green electricity.
It’s a common position of the whining class from other nations to try and turn their irrelevance/lower standards of living - as compared to the US - into a badge of honor. When you have nothing else to offer, point to your ability to suffer and endure unnecessary hardship as evidence of your superiority.
Strong “I would never date Margot Robbie anyway, she’s too fat for me” vibes.
Well.... what one is acclimatized to in terms of temperature is something that 's not just medical - and I find a lot of Americans complaints on AC to be from being acclimatized to indoor AC temps that end up requiring you to wear a sweater inside!
There's certainly not just pure exaggeration but there's also a serious component of exaggeration from Americans versus if one is acclimatized and in habit of not so fierce ACing.
Ok but did you read the piece? Lack of AC in UK is killing tons of people and is certainly rather be in a country that “over-ACs” but is working in green energy solutions, than a country basically outlawing AC to save the environment
I did read the piece, but I find there is rather extensive over-extrapolation by Americans to outright exaggeration (basically outlawing AC e.g.)
Guess you don’t have hyperbole in the UK 🤷♂️
Or rhetorical questions lol
I personally don’t have hyperbole in UK since I am not in UK and not British so…. - but generally don’t find hyperbole useful.
Ha, true! I have to take a sweater to all stores and restaurants all summer: it's such a problem I've kept one in the car in case I forget. Commercial establishments are often wildly over-air-conditioned here.
The British are famous for going into other countries and telling them how to do things. What, they can tell Indians not to burn their widows, but we can’t tell them not to broil their grandparents?
That is such a great sentence.
This article is just proof of the provincial mindset of the author. I was really shocked to find something like this on Silver Bulletin. It's a textbook example of how a narrow data journalism approach can go wrong, if it doesn't take into account history and ways of living, that differ from the one the writer experienced while growing up.
@Silver Bulletin: Please keep to the stuff you really know about. There's enough badly researched stuff on the internet already.
No way, it was right on! The prejudice against AC is killing Brits.
It goes both ways, though, there's clearly some things Europeans should try to copy from America. The AC skepticism doesn't really make sense. At least with some of the other nanny state things like knife and soda limits you can kind of see where they are getting at, even if it seems ridiculous.
Willis Carrier sends his regards.
The fear of air conditioning is exclusively much a European thing. It's normal / desirable to Indians, Japanese, Brazilians, pretty much everywhere else in the world. Lee Kuan Yew called it the "most important invention for us, perhaps one of the signal inventions of history" and said it "changed the nature of civilization"
Don't forget about fan death
He’s showing his “Blueskyism”
Excellent, very interesting. One thing you overlooked, heat is one thing if it is dry, but Great Britain is an island surrounded by sea and in general at sea level and is therefore always quite humid. Heat and humidity is much worse than dry heat.
Yeah that's a good point. I suppose the humidity didn't stand out to me because I came over from Florida
I would also like to see the article acknowledge that although hot days in the UK are on the increase, there are still FAR fewer hot days than in the U.S. I’m currently in Florida and without AC it would be unbearable. In London it’s exceptionally rare to need AC in September, let alone October. That will change but only very gradually.
I also felt your article was extremely mean-spirited in not mentioning any of the advantages the UK has over the U.S. Better quality of life in lots of non-financial ways - such as life expectancy (around 3 years higher in the UK), better public transport, much lower crime (murder rate 5 times higher in the U.S. than London), and of course a far more efficient healthcare system that is free at the point of delivery to everyone. On the downside, as Bill Bryson pointed out, I am enjoying visiting a country where ice isn’t treated as a luxury item.
The article is about AC, not any of those other issues.
Well, not really. I estimate the first 25% of the article was about other stuff to which my comment was extremely relevant.
You and Phoenix. That's what they like to say, no problem, it's a DRY heat. Lemme tell you, 114 regularly is too hot for humans to live in whatever the humidity! Maybe gila monsters and rattlesnakes, that's about all.
This is a big issue, especially in London. The heat problem tends to be worst in new-build flats (which sounds like where you were living?), because they are designed to retain as much heat as possible. Older buildings are often better, because they were designed and built with air-flow in mind (but this means they are condemned as ‘energy inefficient’).
Glad you had a nice time in the UK!
This is the most embarrassing petty piece of writing I’ve read in a long time.
Oh really? Please elaborate. I think he made some pretty convincing points.
Read the replies from people who actually know the UK and have critical reasoning faculties.
I actually lived in the UK for a long time and my husband was born and raised there as well. I’m pretty willing to think critically about things, hence why I felt this author raised some good concerns and points I hadn’t considered before. I’m also someone who has resisted AC for many years. You’re jumping to many conclusions based on nowt about me and my “faculties”.
I also lived in Boston, US for nearly a decade without AC going through many, many long heatwaves of 32c+ temps that even today are quite rare in the UK. It was pretty brutal, so I’m not going to lie having air conditioned places to go elsewhere helped. Something that the UK can often lack. My house in the UK managed to stay cool enough due to the location and the fact that the way it faced didn’t result in a lot of direct sunlight, so we never felt the need to use more than a fan in summer. Most people probably don’t need AC, but the point is that we cannot deny that climate change does require us to think about the effects of heat.
Why did you resist AC?
You didn't read them did you.
The UK certainly has its share of problems but lack of screens on the windows in Southwark (where I also live) has never been the problem for me the author struggled with and I don’t have air-conditioning. Climate change is predicted to bring worryingly warmer temperatures to the UK and the response of Southwark Council to find environmentally friendly solutions strikes me as a much saner alternative to just vastly increasing the demand for energy and all of the complications that massive use of air conditioning would bring which is not to say that the tube won’t benefit in the future from air-conditioning and various parts of the London transport system this is already happening. but the author’s suggesting that wholesale use of air-conditioning is a one stop solution as it’s done in the US ignores the host of environmental complications that would bring.
There is no doubt that the UK economy has stagnated with, like the US, the better off continue to become better off while the poor are getting poor and the middle class is declining. This isn’t news to anyone but the author felt a need to point it out anyway while the author failed to point out that much of the growth of income in the US has been very selective. A major factor in the current US political environment.
Aross the UK political spectrum from the failed government of Liz Truss to the current government almost everyone recognises that the solution is growth. The problem is that there aren’t simple, quick fixes to a problem that goes back through many governments. So pointing out the growth of income disparity between the US and the UK is something the author could have learned by watching five minutes of news on the BBC but does nothing in the way of insight into the country.
While Americans are used to large refrigerators and freezers most Europeans do have smaller refrigerators and smaller flat and as a result, they don’t do the weekly massive food shopping at mega supermarkets that Americans do thus the need for large refrigerators and freezers.Instead, they do more frequent shopping. At least where I live (which is where the author also lived ) it’s simple to order groceries online and have them delivered the next day if needs be.
And just to finish as an American who has lived in London for several decades what struck me about the article was how little the author seems to have understood life in a different culture.
If understanding life in a different culture means thinking hand-delivered groceries is an appropriate solution to one's fridge being too small (rather than simply having a larger fridge), count me in with the author as an unsophisticated rube.
Amen!
…he said in desperation, as the UK sunk deeper and deeper into social, economic, and technological irrelevance.
But surely! From that position of irrelevance is where you’ll do your finest work managing climate change! Any day now!
First, I didn’t say anything in desperation. I’m not sure I understand your point, I’m not sure you understand your point. I think you make a very unsupportable generalised statement in saying the UK is in technological irrelevance, would you like to discuss that with Dennis Hasabis or Oxford University where the Covid vaccine was developed? I have no idea what social irrelevance means. Personally i don’t do any work managing climate change other than on a personal level, but you may have noticed that there is a whole swath of the political spectrum in the UK who see climate change as a hoax and want us to go back to fossil fuels. Are you one of them?
People dying of preventable heat-related deaths is not petty at all.
Using AC is fine. Setting it to 68 degrees in the summer is the problem...here in the USA. I'm typically colder at work in the summer than I am in the winter. I have a small heater at my desk that gets used too frequently in the summer! 😖
While 68 degrees is on the chilly side, I'd rather work in an office with the AC set to 68 degrees than one set to 75 degrees. Most offices will let you wear a sweater or a jacket if you're too cold. Most offices won't let you take off your shirt if you're too hot.
75 degrees is fine if you're on the beach in a swimsuit, but that attire would violate most workplace dress codes. (Swimming pools and strip clubs excepted.)
Personally, I think 72 degrees is the sweet spot, but for the reasons above, I'd take cooler over hotter.
I’ll trade offices with you, ours is kept at a balmy 71! I personally cannot stand indoor temperatures above that mark. 68 is perfect.
Eli writes an article that's basically "lots of UK residents view not having AC as a cultural/moral issue instead of a technical/policy issue"
Tons of comments from UK residents that are basically "oh yeah well maybe we just don't need to be extravagant and wasteful like you Americans"
Seems lots of people either missed the point or are happy to prove it.
I knew you only considered London before reading the first word. Hint: it's the same as assuming Washington insiders know the opinions of everyone in the US. Foolishness.
A/C is NOT a big political issue across the UK. You'd be laughed at for suggesting it in most of the country. Yes in London because it's a couple of degrees hotter than everywhere else, overcrowded and full of cheaply built poorly designed flats that cost more than large homes elsewhere. So the issue is not A/C, the issue is the economic imbalance that encourages the poorly designed housing.
Try Scotland, the North of England etc and try talking about the politics of A/C. You'll get material for a better article about the exquisite use of language the people use to mock you. (See Trump in this regard.)
And as for talking about heat related deaths across all of Europe as relevant to an article about the UK? It's as stupid as comparing bear-related deaths in the US with cat-related deaths in Spain.
This sort of stuff does not support the credibility of any substance hoping to be considered competent at analytical thinking.
And as for knives. I manage to buy good quality kitchen knives easily. Even online. I've gifted most of my children good quality kitchen knives because they all like to cook.
Having to verify I'm 18 or over is not some huge difficulty. It might surprise Americans who expects pre-teens to be allowed to buy guns unmonitored but its really not an issue for sensible people.
That's both silly and pretty terrible to constrain kitchen knives. Let's STOP with the government control, control, control! I replaced all my knives a few years ago, cost me thousands, I had a great time online shopping, and I was free to do it without government interference. We need to have that for essentially everything. Always.
You are not constrained from buying kitchen knives. Children are.
Do you demand that children, however young, be allowed to purchase large sharp knives? As a parent would you give young children your large sharp kitchen knives unsupervised? Now that would be silly and irresponsible.
Consider the 'benefits' the US gets from having no constraints on children obtaining guns? You'll not get UK citizens to agree with you on that. We've seen the pigs ear you country has made because of your constitution.
No, the attack is made on EVERYONE. I know, because even here from time to time some idiot company decides to ask everyone who buys X to swear they are not children: are over 21, I guess. They just ask our birthdates and then no doubt collect that to datamine us. Probably not, I'm just being bitter. Dick's Sporting Goods asked my husband who was buying a knife to scale fish his birthdate, said they wouldn't sell it to "minors." Trust me, he so very does not look like a minor. Pretty seriously stupid. Rite Aide was asking everyone in my county at least, I don't know about the rest of the country, birthdates if we tried to buy a common brand of cold medicine (Nyquil)! Doesn't matter how old we LOOK -- I raised holy hell about that in the store and have resolved never to allow that again. I would go into a Rite Aide the next couple years everytime I needed that stuff just to practice refusing: they would use the cashier's birthday. It was terrible and wrong ---- I've been cheering Rite Aide's corporate demise thru bankruptcy all year. Great big dark empty warehouse, no customers, invading people's privacy for no reason at all. No other stores do that. Crazy, and now the government is doing this stuff in Britain. Very sad.
In which case keep your objections to the uS and continue to drive it down
Don't insult other countries who think children with lethal weapons is a bad idea.
It's only an attack on everyone if you're paranoid enough to consider it an attack. In practice it is not even a minor inconvenience to prove you are over 18.
In the UK it's required to buy alcohol. Do you also think young children should be free to buy liquor so as not to be an attack on you?
I doubt you'll take the advice but ... opening less time complaining about everything and simply getting on with enjoying living works as a lifestyle.
As an American in Switzerland for 10+ years (a country with comfortably richer citizens than the US on almost every measure), I can say quite a few of these differences are very conscious choices or simply preferences rather than GDP per capita mandated austerity measures. The author seems to assume the rest of the world shares his lifestyle preferences. Particularly things like stores being closed on Sunday, they aren't closed because they can't afford to be open, they are closed because of popular rules restricting which stores can open when. While I admit sooner or later AC will be more prevalent in europe, not having AC is and will continue to be a great forcing function for producing better insulated houses and less energy intensive cooling measures. The fact they are not allowed in most Swiss dwellings again does not represent the country's poverty but rather preferences. Finally on dryers, most europeans simply do not like them and what they do to clothing.
They need dryers in England, though: all that rain. I used clotheslines much of my life, and even in dry, sunny America, dryers are better (speaking as one who agrees that the smell of freshly line-dried laundry is wonderful!).
I am a Brit who has lived in the USA for 24 years but has a place in London so am familiar with both countries and feel affection and loyalty to both. I agree with many things you say but take issue with others. Notably comparing gun deaths to heat related deaths. You say there are more heat related deaths in Europe than gun deaths in the US. In 2024 there were between 44,000 and 45,000 guns deaths and over 62,000 heat related deaths in Europe. However, and it's big however, the population of the US -340 million - is less than half that of Europe -744 million. Throwing out statements like that diminishes your credibility.
Eli compared deaths per 100,000 people, not total deaths. The source he cited shows that the European heat related death rate per 100,000 people is higher than the US gun death rate per 100,000 people.
Here is the relevant passage from the citation:
With this rise in temperature — and the aging of the European population — has come a rise in preventable death. Estimates of heat-related mortality vary, but the most commonly cited number is 175,000 annually across the entire region. Given that Europe has a population of about 745 million, this is a death rate of about 23.5 per 100,000 people per year. For comparison, the U.S. death rate from firearms is about 13.7 per 100,000.
You are right. I stand corrected. I need to address my scroll reading issues.
Statistics regarding American gun deaths must be disaggregated by race to make any sense at all.
Very true; it's a black and Latino gang issue primarily.
A lot of people get caught in crossfire, though
There's often a significant difference between "getting caught in the crossfire" and "being an innocent bystander." The distinction is well worth thinking about.
Explain? What do you mean?
Firearm homicides in the US are around 18,000 not 45,000. The number you refer to is mostly suicides, along with a few accidents, plus homicides. The choice of method for suicide is a function of what's available. In Hong Kong, the leading method of suicide is jumping off tall buildings.
Is a suicide death by gun any less tragic than a murder?
I don’t think the gun in a suicide is to blame, much easier to find an alternate weapon for suicide than murder
While it's easier to find an alternative weapon for suicide, suicide method matters a lot in terms of how many attempts become actual suicide. I don't know about other countries, but in the US, women make the majority of suicide attempts but more men die from suicide than women do. It's because men are more likely to shoot themselves and give themselves much less chance to be saved compared to women, who usually choose to overdose on medication as their method.
It's not but it's also not a great argument in favor of EU style gun control. People in countries with strict gun control still find ways to kill themselves and in fact some countries with extreme gun control policies like Japan have a higher per capita rate of suicide than the US does. Gun control might cause a short term drop in suicide rates but over time people would go back to feeling comfortable killing themselves other ways. The solution to suicide is to treat the person and to create a kinder society that does its best to make sure everyone has what they need to thrive. In a country as rich as the US there is no reason that we can't ensure everyone lives a life of dignity and hope, even if they fall onto hard times.
I would argue its even less if you want to analyze gun deaths by people that legally had there firearms. Stats indicate that at least 60% of the gun murders are by people that had a weapon illegally. Gun control isn't going to stop criminals from procuring weapons; the US is a large country with massive borders and as we've seen with the drug trade if people want something there will be other criminals willing to provide those services. Which brings the number of people killed by someone with legal ownership to about 7500; that is the upper cap on the possible lives saved by gun control and it would take a lot of control to get there. The number still sucks and as gun owner myself I'm happy to discuss options to improve that but we need to be accurate in our discussion and not inflammatory. There's lots of things we permit that kill more than 7500 people a year, including popular stuff like alcohol. Even if you don't personally value the ability to own a gun, I would argue that in a free society there has to be a limit to the number of things we use the full force of gov't to control, even if there is a cost in lives because empowering the gov't to control things down to that level eventually leads to authoritarianism. Personally I suspect we'd reduce the number of gun related deaths in the US more with medicare for all than we'd do with any of the control policies being discussed. So we have options that we've not even tried.
Is a suicide death by jumping off a tall building any less tragic than a suicide death by gun?
In terms of its impact on friends and loved ones? No. It may even be more tragic. In terms of its impact on people that are paranoid they’ll immediately get shot if they walk outside in the US? Absolutely. Nobody walks around in fear of getting suicided.
Yes. Well, unless the suicide does the popular thing these days and takes a lot of people with him.
Yes, I was really blown away by that factoid, that American gun deaths are much fewer than European heat deaths!!!!
Migod, time they had air conditioning, then, given the constant, boring carry-on people do about gun deaths.
Sooo I’m not here to pile on as many commenters seem to be doing, because I think your piece is valid and raises some good points.
Wanna start by saying that I’m European (Greek) and have lived in various countries in Europe (France, Italy, Spain, and Greece), and have lived in the U.S. for over a decade (New York). I have only ever lived in one apartment without AC (in France). I think there’s a few things that you ignore in your piece that I want to raise:
1. Technical feasibility. A loooot of buildings in Europe are old, and getting AC installed isn’t that easy. Your best bet is getting one of those units that basically blocks one of your windows and cycles air using a tube that is hanging out of the window. This is ugly, loud, and then blocks you from being able to use this window the rest of the time. Any type of centralized deployment is difficult to
do without a full gut renovation of older buildings.
2. Cost: As you touched upon, running the AC is expensive! My sister lives in the UK (Glasgow, medical school) and her monthly electricity bill is more than triple what I pay in New York. And that’s without AC! As you correctly identified, salaries are lowering and Brits have less purchasing power. Factor in the cost of purchasing + running that AC and you might be looking at 1K GBP in your first year - that’s a lot when you consider where UK salaries are.
3. Inconvenience vs genuine risk: A lot of young people (me, my sister, you) choose to forgo AC for these reasons - and we’re unlikely to die in a 28C heatwave. However, there should be a concerted effort to help older people install and run ACs.
4. Energy supply: if everyone took your advice and suddenly installed AC, the grid wouldn’t be able to cope! There’s a mismatch here between government policy + individual choice, and they need to go hand in hand.
5. Learning to live with the heat: I am in no way going to be as extreme as other commenters on this point. I have lived through heatwaves in my little French flat and it’s not fun. But for the day to day, coming from Greece where it easily gets past 100F in the summer (and where we all have AC!), a key thing is learning to live WITH the heat. You won’t catch a Greek outside at 2pm on a hot day. We search for shade everywhere, we stay hydrated, and we try to do most physically demanding activities in the early morning and evening.
Anywho, all of which is to say I agree, AC is somewhat an issue, but I’m not sure there’s a straightforward solution.
Window units are amazing. I'm running one now and I love it. It's not ugly at all, I don't mind losing one window, and the white noise keeps out background sound and helps me sleep.
As an American who has lived in the UK for 40 years now (on and off) I really appreciate most of the things Eli complains about. Why? Because they're about saving energy. About avoiding and reducing waste. About not embracing a spirit of entitlement. Many of us know how to keep our homes cool without AC, I haven't used a clothes dryer for as long as I can remember and I'm very happy to deal with minor inconveniences (you have to go to a kitchen shop to buy a good kitchen knife, boo hoo) to support efforts to make life safer for everyone. As for the public transport, I love it - I can get from west London to east London in approx 13 minutes in a system that is safe and fast and, yes, air conditioned.
How bout all those heat-related deaths? Those people shouldn't feel "entitled" to live, now should they?
Hey that’s great for you.
"AC uses electricity, which — despite the UK’s plans to reach net zero emissions by 2050 — mostly still comes from fossil fuels."
The link in this passage connects to a chart showing the overall energy use in the UK, which is mostly fossil fuels, because of oil in transportation and natural gas for home heating. But if we look at electricity use by source in the UK (in 2024 from Our World in Data), 30.5% comes from fossil fuels (almost all natural gas, slivers of oil and coal); 31.5% comes from wind and solar, 14.5% from nuclear and hydro. The UK has net imports of electricity amounting to 10.5% of production, mostly from France (largely nuclear) and Norway (largely hydro), so that would count mostly as renewable. The remaining 13% is listed as "other renewables" but is mostly biomass burning -- largely wood pellets from North America burning at repurposed coal plants, such as Drax's Yorkshire power plant. This is not technically fossil fuel, but it's the most emission-intensive supposedly renewable way to generate electricity.
So adding the 31.5% wind/solar to the 14.5% nuclear/hydro to 3/4 of the 10.5% imported nuclear/hydro gets to about 54% renewable, not including the biomass burning.
There’s an elephant in the room that Americans sometimes miss in this discussion: the price of electricity. The average US electricity rate is 17.47¢ per kWh, while in the UK it’s 26.35p – roughly 35.31¢ at current exchange rates.
If you run an air conditioner for 800 hours a year, that would cost an American just over $500, but a British or Irish person more than $1,000. For many households, especially given the 60% lower rate of AC ownership in the UK, that extra £400 a year simply isn’t affordable.
So even without government discouragement or environmental pressure, you wouldn’t see the same rollout. People simply can’t afford the running costs. The same applies to tumble dryers and other energy-heavy appliances – usage patterns follow price signals as much as climate.
Would someone in the UK need to run an air conditioner for 800 hours per year? 2025 apparently had 25 days of uncomfortably warm weather in London; that would be 600 hours of cooling if used 24 hours on each of those days.
Homes in the UK tend to be smaller than homes in the US, so that would also be a savings. Google's AI suggests that the price to cool an average UK home for 600 hours would range from £158 to £360, and less if owners choose to run the system for only part of the day during warm spells.
That assumes people would only use AC when it’s exceptionally hot. But that’s not how people behave. Just as people don’t only turn on their central heating during a cold snap, they wouldn’t limit AC to the handful of official “heatwave” days.
The average comfort range in the UK is around 18-21°C, which is well below the formal heatwave threshold. When I worked in a Belfast office with AC, it ran more or less constantly from May through September during working hours. And Belfast is several degrees cooler than London. Once people have it, they use it to maintain comfort, not merely to survive extremes.
So yes, minimalist use would be cheaper, but I doubt that’s how most households would operate. The same pattern shows up with tumble dryers: people buy them for convenience, then use them far more often than strictly necessary.
And this isn’t just about air conditioning. It’s the same issue holding back electrification more broadly. You can subsidise heat pumps, EVs, or electric cookers all you want, but if electricity remains backbreakingly expensive, uptake among lower-income households will stall. Until electricity is affordable, electrification will remain a middle-class luxury rather than a universal transition.
I don't understand this - if it's that expensive, then yes, people will limit their use because they can't afford it.
This of course is the key, power costs, what could explain the difference. So to all those berating UK leftism, although I'm a Scots, let me conform to stereotype and say it's down to US imperialism. Of both parties. Now I'm off to freeze to death in comfort.