30 years from now, a billboard rises in Shanghai. On it, a woman in a traditional ethnic peasant dress strikes a ballet pose. The text reads:
Christly Rhythm Artes Troupe
Europe before air conditioning.
this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2026
182 points (99.5% liked)
memes
23841 readers
280 users here now
dank memes
Rules:
-
All posts must be memes and follow a general meme setup.
-
No unedited webcomics.
-
Someone saying something funny or cringe on twitter/tumblr/reddit/etc. is not a meme. Post that stuff in /c/slop
-
Va*sh posting is haram and will be removed.
-
Follow the code of conduct.
-
Tag OC at the end of your title and we'll probably pin it for a while if we see it.
-
Recent reposts might be removed.
-
No anti-natalism memes. See: Eco-fascism Primer
founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
this aircon thing is the most manufactured "controversy" of the year.
it's so you won't talk about the actual issue which is an existential threat, it's basically the new red herring for oil shills to use so they can steer the conversation away from them.
Yeah.... we're all gonna have fun...
Looking at wet bulb event prediction maps is scary stuff. Gonna be a loooot of people looking for new homes and we're gonna have to figure out how to massively intensify farming in increasingly less fertile land.
Interesting stuff. I'm thrilled that it's still like an active debate that climate change is real.
"the important thing is that people are talking about it" 
Maybe there has been some change of mind and it has softened a bit but the anti AC thing used to be very real.
France has made studies about the harms of ACs. The German push to install heat pumps (which often are ACs too) including pretty generous subsidies was pretty controversial.
There are laws in many European countries/cities/etc that make it pretty difficult for both residents and homeowners to install ACs usually in the name of aesthetics.
Now during the heatwave it's of course less controversial that ACs would be a good idea.
Has there been some kind of controversy? I'm deliberately out of that kind of loop (but I'm curious now!).
There are lots of green parties in Europe and they have always been against mass AC because of their energy use and because it lets poor city design and poor insulation off the hook. There's also the fact that the ACs have to compensate for making it cooler indoors, so outdoors gets even hotter. It's an argument I'm sympathetic to, honestly.
But I suspect that the real reason AC isn't widespread is because there isn't capacity on the electric grid and high electricity prices scares people off, in short a complete failure of European energy policy, for which the Greens are partly to blame with their hasty shutdowns of polluting and nuclear plants while the renewables rollout keeps getting stalled by political winds and NIMBYism.
And because the left parties typically pool from the same voter base as the Greens they believe the same, even a self-declared Marxist party like the Belgian PVDA/PTB is still against nuclear although not as adamant about it.
Something interesting and bizarre that these points don't really cover, is why they're still opposed in public buildings like hospitals. If you're going to cool one building, it should be a hospital. It wouldn't even be that big a stress to the grid. Just suffering for the sake of suffering.
Thanks. Yeah, I've heard quite a few people were upset at the German greens, in particular, for this reason.
I want to emphasise that they're not the only ones to blame, I do think they get scapegoated a bit too much sometimes. Insurgentrat in this thread does a good job explaining all the other reasons
Which country are you talking about. I think each needs it's own investigation.
The German media was extremely critical of Habeck for subsidiesing ACs and "sabotaging his own goals".
Rooftop solar is a pretty straightforward solution to the energy need of ACs at least outside cities.
The German greens were also not the ones that rushed the nuclear exit.
I said "partly" because now a lot of environmentalist ideas are pretty mainstream.
I'm most familiar with the Netherlands and Germany, a little bit of Belgium.
just people memeing about how Europe doesn't have air conditioning (Europe has ac but not as much as the us)
there's a deadly heatwave
Yeah and the general superiority stuff going on about it.
Until recently it largely wasn't needed in many places that do now, owner-occupiers are rare comparatively, old buildings are hard to refit, electricity is quite costly. All that made it a luxury item with few installers. Reverse cycle heatpumps aren't even that common in many places vs unidirectional ones and gas was relatively cheap so the heating side of the value wasn't great.
No great mystery, no stupidity required.
Obviously in countries where heat, and especially humid heat, is common it's extremely attractive and there's been wide adoption. If you also get cold winters it's a no brainer to go reverse cycle.
old buildings are pretty easy to refit, as long as you dont give a shit how the building is gonna look. it's gonna have the external units hanging off the side, and it's gonna be ugly.
but seriously, installing a minisplit requires you to drill one (1) hole in the wall, stick the refrigerant and condensation lines through it and screw two boxes up on walls. one outside, one inside.
Kinda. Except if everyone is doing it in say an apartment building you have to plan for the increased electrical load and in older structures particularly with like plaster electrical retrofits are difficult. In certain wall structures it's not always easy to know where drilling wont mess with wiring or plumbing too.
There are also often laws trying to restrict appearance from the street from changing too much so that's another barrier. And of course you need your landlord to agree, and agree to the ongoing maintenance. They'll also jack the rent.
In certain wall structures it's not always easy to know where drilling wont mess with wiring or plumbing too.
well yes, when i had my AC installed, they drilled into the conduit that had my wires inside. but they're prepared for that sort of thing and stopped in time, so they only damaged the conduit, not the wires inside.
But intact art nouveau fascades are way more important then whether the people living in the buildings survive the summer or how much they spend on heating in the winter.
AC heating isn't exactly cheap. I'm in Australia and it costs me around 300 aud a month in winter to keep the house around 21 about half of every day. I often wake up to a house that's between 4 and 10 degrees celcius. I have rooftop solar too. Heating in general is expensive.
Until gas prices went nuts it made way more sense to use gas for heating. We didn't even bother with AC prior because even when it hits 50C I'm cruising, a cold shower and a nap sets you right if you're used to it.
Yeah, I lived in a double brick 2 storey terrace house in NSW, and it was difficult to control the temperature without spending a lot of money.
Well, as one of the end houses anyway. For the terrace houses sandwiched between the others, they have the benefit of having very little surface area exposed to the elements
I always assumed the verticality of terrace houses would allow for evaporative coolers to work, but I never did get a chance to try.
I was thinking about thermal isolation when I mentioned the fascades.
Some buildings need very little energy to stay at comfortable temperatures.
True, building codes are hard to change because moneied interests like building shitboxes and like the entire landlord philosophy is spend nothing take everything.
Everyone should be building passive solar homes where possible though
They are building new buildings like this but those are getting talked to shit. Too blocky, concrete desert (bushes and lawns next to every building but who's counting). Then you walk inside and it has 25° during the hottest day of the summer even though the floor cooling hasn't even been connected yet.
Vexing.
My dream is a concrete home half dug into the earth with bushfire shutters. Would be pretty chill being comfortable year round and not having to evacuate every couple of years.
People whinge about functional houses a lot.
yeah, there's some of that. i dont know what the law is around here, but either we have very few protected buildings or the government just decided to look the other way while people install their illegal AC units. cos it doesnt look like anyone cares, every house has a ton of them hanging off the outside now and they drip on you as you walk along the sidewalk.
Are you under the impression that most Europeans live in historical buildings?
In my city, yes.
Until recently
Not that recently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heatwave
Was not considered new norm. It isn't worth getting AC for once in a decade or rarer events.
That's true but there has an increasing number of natural disasters since. Also the flooding the year before. Shit has been fucked for decades
And social change is slow /shrug. You need companies marketing units, tradies trained in installation. Creates a market, lowers prices, improves uptake. A feedback loop.
And like a looooot of people in Europe rent. Makes it harder.
Places like Spain have better uptake cause the economics were just easier to justify since you're using it often.
And like a looooot of people in Europe rent. Makes it harder.
God, yeah. We need rental reform just as much as AC.
Lmao they've done their research and created a perfect bit
There's a reason that European society has never in human history, embraced AC. You can't just force central air on a society that doesn't understand the values of HVAC.
Those savage bleachskins and their "casu marzu" and their "foie gras" and their "hákarl" and their "Kalles Kaviar" and their "hackepeter" and their "stargazy pie". Of course they would resist the light of enlightenment. It's a continent of people who think civilisation, government and statesmanship were perfected by a bunch of Hellenic pederasts or Roman dictators.
We shouldn't try and enlighten them, for they deserve the darkness.
AC != central AC
And non-central AC is much superior to any non-busieness dwelling
Deploying the simplest of reverse psychology on the crackers like they're 5yo's
Unfortunately, most of the crackers aren’t that advanced.
I don't believe in the bicameral mind, but cumskins are a good counterargument to my belief.
chef's kiss