Air conditioners are amazing and something that every middle class and high-income household relies on during summers around the world. Not only the households but office buildings, malls, hospitals, restaurants, etc. heavily rely on air conditioning during summers. The number of individuals and businesses buying air conditioning is going up every year. It's not a luxury anymore but has become a necessity for the common everyday person but how is that affecting our environment? What is the cost of all of us using ACs?
In the past Chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) released from the AC started depleting the ozone layer. The ozone layer is very important for absorbing the sun's harmful ultraviolet radiation. This resulted in increased cases of skin cancer and if it kept going on would have destroyed biodiversity, crops, etc. However, due to the implementation of the Montreal Protocol, we were able to stop this destruction and reverse the damage done. This also marks a significant point in history where an environmental treaty signed by several different countries was actually successfully met showing that if we all put an effort into it, we can make a difference.
As part of removing CFCs, we started using Hydrochlorofluorocarbons (HCFCs) as refrigerants in the ACs. Though HCFCs do not have ozone depletion potential they as it turns out are potent greenhouse gases (GHGs). Each HCFC molecule traps heat at a rate 1000 times more than CO2 and CH4. Though their quantities in the atmosphere are less their destruction potential is quite high even in low concentrations. The destruction potential of HCFCs comes in the form of absorbing infrared radiation and trapping the heat in the atmosphere stopping it from escaping the earth. In addition, there is a huge requirement of energy for running the AC for every household and commercial facility which the existing infrastructure of renewable energy cannot meet. So we are heating our surroundings more to keep our rooms cold.
“Comfort cooling begins not as a survival strategy but as a business venture. It still carries all those symbolic meanings, though its currency now works globally, cleaving the world into civilized cooling and barbaric heat. Despite what we assume, as a means of weathering a heatwave, individual air conditioning is terribly ineffective. It works only for those who came to afford it. But even then, their use in urban areas only makes the surrounding microclimate hotter, sometimes by a factor of 10°F, actively threatening the lives of those who don't have access to cooling”
-Eric Dean Wilson
So, what can be done?
Advocate in your community to have public cooling centres including shade-giving trees, safe green spaces and water infrastructure to cool
Bring back watercoolers and rely on evaporative cooling
Switch the existing household and commercial air conditioning to heat pumps
Smart design architecture to cool our spaces naturally
But it is more important to learn to get used to discomfort, stop using ACs and get away from thermal monotony as this will make us more resilient to heat-related illness. This is also important because as heat traps become more frequent so will blackout and grid failure and there won't’ be any AC's running to cool us without electricity.
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