Britain's left warms to air conditioning
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- Britain is experiencing what the article calls "Europe's worst ever heatwave," with many households considering air conditioning for the first time.
- Harper's neighbor recorded a 17.8°C temperature drop after hanging a sheet outside his window — the article says that's "the equivalent of multiple 400W radiators on full blast."
- Smith Mordak, former CEO of the UK Green Building Council, called individual AC units "the bottled water of urban cooling" and advocated shared "mains water" solutions built around public health.
- London buses are flagged as a "severe misallocation" of cooling: most lack air conditioning while nearly all private taxis have it.
- The article notes there are currently no serious licensing rules governing AC installation beyond who can afford it, allowing wealthy households to run units "without any regard for their neighbours or the climate."
- France is cited as a model — the author points to the French government's major stakes in energy, transport, and communications as precedent for public ownership of the cooling sector.
- The author proposes a mix of tactics — tree planting, European-style awnings and shutters, insulation upgrades, ambient loop heat networks, and cross-ventilation — with AC used only alongside, never in place of, those measures.
Why it matters: The neighbor's 17.8°C shade experiment shows how much heat British homes bleed through bare windows — meaning AC alone fights a problem external shading and insulation could solve more cheaply. The bus-versus-taxi split (most London buses uncooled, nearly every private taxi cooled) reframes cooling as a class question, not just a comfort one, with public-transit AC positioned as the next front in the left's push to treat essentials as public infrastructure.
