Last reskeet - once I learned that heating a building requires more energy than cooling a building, and certainly I would never advocate to leave buildings unheated, it really switched my thinking on air con usage.
It's weird that a country with massive numbers of deaths from heat every summer for the past decade (ie, France) would even allow new buildings to go up without a/c
Even 30 years ago summers in Paris were miserable. Like I would actively recommend against going there as a tourist June to September even if you can find a hotel that has a/c
for our 30th anniversary a couple of years ago Indy briefly suggested we go to Paris. Our anniversary is in August! I vetoed that immediately. We went to Iceland.
we are very fortunate in that we've been there more than once, and I agree it's amazing. I have also never slept so well in August since I moved to the SE US!
We have solar panels on the south-facing half of our New England roof -- half the array is ours (it's a 2-family) -- and in the summer even constantly running 3 surely-inefficient window A/C units for bedrooms/offices we have like 10-cent electric bills. So yeah! Not THAT much energy.
also we're getting central air put in as part of a major renovation and I am thriilllllllled and I bet even taking care of the whole house it'll use even less energy because it's not window units
