Though it’s only early summer, already the heat index soared above 120 degrees in parts of Texas and Louisiana the past week. (In Corpus Christi, the heat index reached 125 degrees on Saturday.) After days of surging temperatures in India, in the latest of a series of extreme heat waves in the country this year, dozens of people recently died. A spring heat wave in Asia, made 30 times more likely by climate change, sparked fires, melted roads, and closed schools. And earlier this month, global temperatures temporarily spiked 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels, a key limit in the Paris climate agreement.
As extreme heat grows, air conditioner sales are surging: By 2030, the world may add another billion AC units. In 2018, the International Energy Agency predicted that the number of air conditioners would triple by the middle of the century, driven both by rising temperatures and the fact that more people around the world can now afford the tech.
Skyrocketing adoption of ACs is a solution to extreme heat, but it’s also part of the problem, since air conditioners are also making climate change worse. The technology’s high energy use helps make it responsible for around 4% of global emissions, roughly twice as much as from all of the world’s airplanes.
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