Nobody tries to live in central Texas without Air Conditioning.
Nobody tries to live in central Texas without Air Conditioning.
I lived in Vietnam and most people there don't have A/C. Temperatures are often 33C-35C during the day and with the humidity it feels like 38C-40C.
Hell, there are construction workers in heavy clothing working outside all day in those temperatures.
This attitude is what causes deaths due to heat exhaustion. It really ought to be a criminal offense for landlords / builders to NOT install AC in such regions. Not having AC is literally a death sentence in places with wet bulb events, including countries like Vietnam, as well as cities in the US like Seattle, Houston, and Miami.
Check your privilege, as they say.
https://www.washington.edu/news/2023/04/06/washington-states...
Hell, when I lived in Singapore (3 degree from the equator), most homes had A/C, but many, many people never used it because the electricity was something they didn't want to spend their money on.
People have been living in that region for thousands of years, of which only the last 50 years has A/C been an option.
A substantial and growing portion of the planet is inhospitable to human life without AC.
Doesn't matter if they'll die without it, doesn't matter if you feel they should be forced to have one. The reality doesn't care about your feelings.
Empirically it has not. Just because Americans who aren't acclimatized to high temperatures "need" A/C, doesn't mean it's a necessity, considering people living in far hotter climates do without.
You can acclimatise. 40C+ heat is harsh at first, but it's very survivable and you do get used to it. Worst I had was working in a furniture factory which was just a big tin shed with no A/C in a 45c+ heatwave in Australia. It was pretty brutal, I've never sweated so much in my life, but no harm done.
The cold, however, is worse. Living in cold countries with no (or bad) heating is horrible, and much more dangerous. People sleep outdoors in SE Asia with no problem. People die in their homes by the thousands every winter in Europe.
When the humidty is high your sweat has no cooling effect and your body heats up to the point of collapse.
I find that hard to believe. Do you have a source? Preferably one that doesn't include zone of wars.
tldr: 200,000+ annual excess deaths in Europe due to cold. 20,000+ due to heat. Literally 10 times as many people die from cold as from heat.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsde...
tldr; "An estimated 13,400 more deaths occurred in the winter period (December 2021 to March 2022) compared with the average of the non-winter periods; this was the second-lowest figure since 1950 to 1951 and was affected by the larger number of deaths in the non-winter months (August 2021 to November 2021 and April 2022 to July 2022)."
Is that enough sources?
You clearly can acclimatize.
https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
"Between 1979 and 2018, the death rate as a direct result of exposure to heat (underlying cause of death) generally hovered between 0.5 and 2 deaths per million people, with spikes in certain years (see Figure 1). Overall, a total of more than 11,000 Americans have died from heat-related causes since 1979, according to death certificates."
(same site, different page) https://www.epa.gov/climate-indicators/climate-change-indica...
"Between 1979 and 2016, the death rate as a direct result of exposure to cold (underlying cause of death) generally ranged from 1 to 2.5 deaths per million people, with year-to-year fluctuations (see Figure 1). Overall, a total of more than 19,000 Americans have died from cold-related causes since 1979, according to death certificates."
A lot smaller difference than Europe, and there's the 1995 heatwave thing in Chicago which throws it all out of whack, but there's still more people dying from cold than heat, even in the USA.