Europe's Deadly Aversion to Air Conditioning
Tens of thousands die in European summers for want of a technology the rest of the rich world takes for granted
Roger Pielke Jr.
Jun 25, 2026
Europe is warming: ~0.5°C per decade since the 1980s. Figure 1 shows the continent’s annual count of days since 1950 with “strong heat stress” — a feels-like temperature of 32°C or higher. The trend was flat into the 1980s, then rose sharply: 2022 through 2024 rank as the highest on record.
Figure 1. Annual number of days with at least 'strong heat stress' (UTCI ≥ 32°C), 1950–2024, for Europe as defined by WMO Region VI (geographic Europe plus Greenland and parts of the Middle East and Caucasus — broader than the EU figures used elsewhere). Digitized from Copernicus / ESOTC 2024, Fig. S4.3 (ERA5-HEAT).
Heat mortality has also been increasing in Europe: Summer 2022 saw an estimated ~68,000 heat-related deaths, 2023, ~50,800; 2024, ~62,800. The WHO European Region reports that heat mortality is up by about 30 percent over two decades.
This post shows that Europe largely chooses these deaths through a long resistance to a 1902 invention that the rest of the rich world treats as an incredible benefit of modern technology — air conditioning.
This post on the human toll of Europe’s aversion to airconditioning was motivated by three essays:
https://rogerpielkejr.substack.com/p/europes-deadly-aversion-to-air-conditioning
