Air-Conditioning Should Be a Human Right in the Climate Crisis

Rose M. Mutiso, Morgan D. Bazilian, Jacob Kincer, and Brooke Bowser write about how we need to protect vulnerable people from killer heat without destroying the environment.  As the world heats up, billions of people need air-conditioning. This 120-year-old technology used to be considered a luxury, but in the age of climate change, it is a necessity for human survival. Understandably, this has created anxiety over the climate threat of a world overrun with ACs. But the coming boom in air-conditioning is an essential shift toward reducing the enormous gap in cooling availability that exists between rich and poor people and nations—and toward producing a more equitable world.  May 10, 2022.