Many (not all) American comments about air conditioning online have reminded me of many (not all) American comments about soccer during the World Cup. A lot of Americans are rolling up their sleeves and tweeting about how soccer can be made better. In both cases Americans have discovered something about the outside world and become extremely agitated to find other people don't do things the way Americans prefer.
Helen, I think you're responding to one version of the argument, but perhaps not the strongest one.
If the claim is simply, "More Europeans die from heat than Americans die from guns, therefore Europe is bad," I agree, that's just point-scoring.
But there's another way to read the comparison.
Suppose Europe experiences roughly 63,000 heat-related deaths in a year, while the U.S. experiences roughly 15,000 firearm homicides. The interesting question isn't whether the two causes are morally equivalent. They aren't.
The interesting question is why some causes of preventable death mobilize enormous political capital, media attention, philanthropy, activism, technological investment, and institutional urgency, while others of comparable or greater scale are treated primarily as technical or infrastructure problems.
That's not whataboutism. It's a question about how societies allocate attention and resources.
We compare unrelated causes of death all the time in public health; not because they are causally connected, but because governments, charities, researchers, and the public all operate under finite budgets, finite political attention, and finite institutional capacity.
So I think the comparison becomes much more interesting if the question changes from:
"Which problem is worse?"
to:
"Why do some problems become moral crusades while others become engineering problems?"
I would be interested to read that. I focus mostly on the culture war elements on things and bad reasoning, but if you develop an argument about this aspect of it, please nudge me about it!
I’m an American living in the UK with window unit aircon in the bedrooms. I think a lot about guns in America (I would like the US to regulate guns the same way we regulate car ownership and insurance since I think eliminating them entirely is impossible in the US) and aircon in Europe (I think there needs to be widespread government investment in making air conditioning accessible for citizens and workers).
Americans face a lot of taunting, shaming, and disgust at the number of gun deaths in our country from Europeans on a regular basis. School shootings are frequently brought out very early in an argument by Europeans as a way to discredit anything an American has to say about basically any policy or problem. Americans are used to being shamed and silenced by Europeans because our government has failed to protect its citizens from gun violence.
The fact that Europe is struggling with its own, arguably much less complicated to resolve crisis of unnecessary deaths (disallowing air conditioning is not written into any country’s constitution to my knowledge) due to heat related illness, then seems ludicrous to an American. Americans look at these statistics and wonder if European governments are so skilled at looking after their citizens (like we have been repeatedly told) then why are so many people dying from a cause with such a straightforward solution?
Basically I think Americans have a chip on their shoulder and Europeans have a superiority complex and both like to take the piss out of each other for their failings. And that’s why the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths keeps coming up. It’s just a game of gotcha.
Yeah. That will always happen, of course, but it makes me very sad to see it. So many of my most respected thinkers and most loved people are in America.
I am not a fan of it. I feel trapped in the middle. I love both my countries and yeah they aren’t perfect, but we can work on improving them without shaming each other. That would be my preference but it’s rare
I don’t know about that. I think that might be negativity bias. I’m off to the US tomorrow and I anticipate finding people to be warm and welcoming as usual. We shall see.
I should qualify my statement, people being respectful about these topics is pretty rare online but in person people are generally lovely to each other. I hope you have a wonderful trip ☺️
"The freedom not to have air conditioning belongs in a category with other lifestyle choices that can impact health negatively. It belongs on a shelf with smoking, drinking heavily, being obese or leading a sedentary lifestyle."
Mystifying rare miss here, I think. AC may be beneficial in many circumstances, but it is an artificial imposition on the natural order of things; going without is not a vice, any more than going without a car or a telephone, or refusing to eat certain foods. We are discussing this subject because the European majority do without, and the majority of those survive just fine.
AC also carries economic penalties for its installation, operation and maintenance, as well as health penalties which are poorly understood: promoting mold growth, CO2 accumulation in enclosed spaces, and bodily shock on encountering the uncontrolled climate outside. Perhaps these are minor tradeoffs! But they're recognized in many societies, including yours: isn't "fresh air fiend" a Britishism? Surely their fiendishness is ironic!
Well, we're writing in the contexts of the heat deaths. My previous piece was about how many Europeans do not like to artificially chill themselves. It's the elderly mostly who are vulnerable to dying if they do not.
But natural does not indicate healthier. It can be quite healthy to heat and cool ourselves to within our optimal range! And we're used to stepping from warm spaces to cold ones because we have heating in winter. I don't think any health risks have been demonstrated. There are all sorts of narratives.
“Criticisms of governmental policy making it difficult or expensive to own AC and failing to provide it to vulnerable people at high risk of heat exhaustion are warranted and generally conducted seriously and thoughtfully. People who are concerned with that debate are not generally trying to make arguments comparing heat deaths to gun deaths.”
A bit bizarre that lack of AC should be set against gun ownership. The European attitude towards Covid is much more perplexing here. Why should it be OK to accept thousands of unnecessary heat deaths while the threat of Covid deaths triggered massive lockdowns? What’s wrong with Europe for it to accept gutting its economy for a virus but refusing to install AC?
It depends who you are talking when you say “Europe.”
If you mean political leaders the policies for Covid lockdowns were about trying to prevent the spread of a virus which threatened to overwhelm healthcare systems and kill people. The policies on AC are mostly to do with reducing energy use or protecting architecture. The governments themselves are unlikely to give everybody AC and I don’t think America does either. They can be appealed to to make having it cheaper and easier and installing it in state run care homes and hospitals.
If you mean European people, they had a variety of views about Covid lockdowns and this probably does not have much in common with whether or not they install AC. In the Mediterranean countries they are more likely to and in the Northern ones much less so. This is largely because it’s only hot enough to become uncomfortable for a few days a year and they’d rather spend their money on a new shower or upgrade their car.
I think your piece misses the most critical point raised by your own commenter, Vincent Bocchinfuso.
You frame the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths as a "tit-for-tat" argument based on resentment. However, this misses the systemic question: why do some preventable deaths mobilize enormous institutional and media urgency, while others are treated as mere "infrastructure problems"?
It is not a matter of "tit-for-tat" or comparing apples to oranges but a critique of how societies allocate political, economic, and institutional attention. When the U.S. demonstrates systemic disparities in life expectancy, maternal mortality, and social stability compared to Europe, observers aren't necessarily acting out of "resentment" but they are pointing out that the American "system" is failing on its own metrics of success.
Dismissing these critiques as childish or "personally aggrieved" is a convenient way to avoid discussing the hard data of institutional performance. If we care about solving problems rather than winning arguments, we shouldn't pathologize the comparison but examine what those disparities actually say about the health of the respective societies.
No, I just wrote about a different aspect. The one I wanted to address. I did that deliberately. Vincent’s thoughts on why some preventable deaths gain so much traction and others do not are also valuable and I shared them, but I chose to write about a different aspect.
The juxtaposition of arseholes and assholes was cute!
Yes I enjoyed that a lot.
Many (not all) American comments about air conditioning online have reminded me of many (not all) American comments about soccer during the World Cup. A lot of Americans are rolling up their sleeves and tweeting about how soccer can be made better. In both cases Americans have discovered something about the outside world and become extremely agitated to find other people don't do things the way Americans prefer.
Rational thinking prevails again.
Helen, I think you're responding to one version of the argument, but perhaps not the strongest one.
If the claim is simply, "More Europeans die from heat than Americans die from guns, therefore Europe is bad," I agree, that's just point-scoring.
But there's another way to read the comparison.
Suppose Europe experiences roughly 63,000 heat-related deaths in a year, while the U.S. experiences roughly 15,000 firearm homicides. The interesting question isn't whether the two causes are morally equivalent. They aren't.
The interesting question is why some causes of preventable death mobilize enormous political capital, media attention, philanthropy, activism, technological investment, and institutional urgency, while others of comparable or greater scale are treated primarily as technical or infrastructure problems.
That's not whataboutism. It's a question about how societies allocate attention and resources.
We compare unrelated causes of death all the time in public health; not because they are causally connected, but because governments, charities, researchers, and the public all operate under finite budgets, finite political attention, and finite institutional capacity.
So I think the comparison becomes much more interesting if the question changes from:
"Which problem is worse?"
to:
"Why do some problems become moral crusades while others become engineering problems?"
To me, that's the conversation worth having.
I would be interested to read that. I focus mostly on the culture war elements on things and bad reasoning, but if you develop an argument about this aspect of it, please nudge me about it!
Okie dokie, I'll tag you on a post in a bit :)
I’m an American living in the UK with window unit aircon in the bedrooms. I think a lot about guns in America (I would like the US to regulate guns the same way we regulate car ownership and insurance since I think eliminating them entirely is impossible in the US) and aircon in Europe (I think there needs to be widespread government investment in making air conditioning accessible for citizens and workers).
Americans face a lot of taunting, shaming, and disgust at the number of gun deaths in our country from Europeans on a regular basis. School shootings are frequently brought out very early in an argument by Europeans as a way to discredit anything an American has to say about basically any policy or problem. Americans are used to being shamed and silenced by Europeans because our government has failed to protect its citizens from gun violence.
The fact that Europe is struggling with its own, arguably much less complicated to resolve crisis of unnecessary deaths (disallowing air conditioning is not written into any country’s constitution to my knowledge) due to heat related illness, then seems ludicrous to an American. Americans look at these statistics and wonder if European governments are so skilled at looking after their citizens (like we have been repeatedly told) then why are so many people dying from a cause with such a straightforward solution?
Basically I think Americans have a chip on their shoulder and Europeans have a superiority complex and both like to take the piss out of each other for their failings. And that’s why the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths keeps coming up. It’s just a game of gotcha.
Yeah. That will always happen, of course, but it makes me very sad to see it. So many of my most respected thinkers and most loved people are in America.
I am not a fan of it. I feel trapped in the middle. I love both my countries and yeah they aren’t perfect, but we can work on improving them without shaming each other. That would be my preference but it’s rare
I don’t know about that. I think that might be negativity bias. I’m off to the US tomorrow and I anticipate finding people to be warm and welcoming as usual. We shall see.
I should qualify my statement, people being respectful about these topics is pretty rare online but in person people are generally lovely to each other. I hope you have a wonderful trip ☺️
"The freedom not to have air conditioning belongs in a category with other lifestyle choices that can impact health negatively. It belongs on a shelf with smoking, drinking heavily, being obese or leading a sedentary lifestyle."
Mystifying rare miss here, I think. AC may be beneficial in many circumstances, but it is an artificial imposition on the natural order of things; going without is not a vice, any more than going without a car or a telephone, or refusing to eat certain foods. We are discussing this subject because the European majority do without, and the majority of those survive just fine.
AC also carries economic penalties for its installation, operation and maintenance, as well as health penalties which are poorly understood: promoting mold growth, CO2 accumulation in enclosed spaces, and bodily shock on encountering the uncontrolled climate outside. Perhaps these are minor tradeoffs! But they're recognized in many societies, including yours: isn't "fresh air fiend" a Britishism? Surely their fiendishness is ironic!
Well, we're writing in the contexts of the heat deaths. My previous piece was about how many Europeans do not like to artificially chill themselves. It's the elderly mostly who are vulnerable to dying if they do not.
But natural does not indicate healthier. It can be quite healthy to heat and cool ourselves to within our optimal range! And we're used to stepping from warm spaces to cold ones because we have heating in winter. I don't think any health risks have been demonstrated. There are all sorts of narratives.
“Criticisms of governmental policy making it difficult or expensive to own AC and failing to provide it to vulnerable people at high risk of heat exhaustion are warranted and generally conducted seriously and thoughtfully. People who are concerned with that debate are not generally trying to make arguments comparing heat deaths to gun deaths.”
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/europes-resistance-to-ac-is-driving?r=k7sg9&utm_medium=ios
There are people who are thoughtfully doing both.
A bit bizarre that lack of AC should be set against gun ownership. The European attitude towards Covid is much more perplexing here. Why should it be OK to accept thousands of unnecessary heat deaths while the threat of Covid deaths triggered massive lockdowns? What’s wrong with Europe for it to accept gutting its economy for a virus but refusing to install AC?
It depends who you are talking when you say “Europe.”
If you mean political leaders the policies for Covid lockdowns were about trying to prevent the spread of a virus which threatened to overwhelm healthcare systems and kill people. The policies on AC are mostly to do with reducing energy use or protecting architecture. The governments themselves are unlikely to give everybody AC and I don’t think America does either. They can be appealed to to make having it cheaper and easier and installing it in state run care homes and hospitals.
If you mean European people, they had a variety of views about Covid lockdowns and this probably does not have much in common with whether or not they install AC. In the Mediterranean countries they are more likely to and in the Northern ones much less so. This is largely because it’s only hot enough to become uncomfortable for a few days a year and they’d rather spend their money on a new shower or upgrade their car.
I think your piece misses the most critical point raised by your own commenter, Vincent Bocchinfuso.
You frame the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths as a "tit-for-tat" argument based on resentment. However, this misses the systemic question: why do some preventable deaths mobilize enormous institutional and media urgency, while others are treated as mere "infrastructure problems"?
It is not a matter of "tit-for-tat" or comparing apples to oranges but a critique of how societies allocate political, economic, and institutional attention. When the U.S. demonstrates systemic disparities in life expectancy, maternal mortality, and social stability compared to Europe, observers aren't necessarily acting out of "resentment" but they are pointing out that the American "system" is failing on its own metrics of success.
Dismissing these critiques as childish or "personally aggrieved" is a convenient way to avoid discussing the hard data of institutional performance. If we care about solving problems rather than winning arguments, we shouldn't pathologize the comparison but examine what those disparities actually say about the health of the respective societies.
No, I just wrote about a different aspect. The one I wanted to address. I did that deliberately. Vincent’s thoughts on why some preventable deaths gain so much traction and others do not are also valuable and I shared them, but I chose to write about a different aspect.
Incidentally, many more people die in Europe from cold than from heat, and who's talking about THAT? Might make this my new hobby horse.