In southern Europe this is false for many weeks during the summer. During heatwaves you want to open all the windows during the night, and close everything at 9ish-10. Because the temperature outside is going to rise to 40-45 celsius the ambient air will only heat your house, even drafts will feel burning hot. So not just shutters, but glass windows and curtains too,
Then about 8 hours later, you want to open everything back up and wash your balcony or terrace (evaporative cooling it essentially), you want to use a minimum amount of water, that will evaporate in the next 30-40 minutes because it attracts mosquitos.
But overall air conditioning is the way to go.
This is also now often false in non-southern Europe as well.
Apparently one of the reasons why French don't have air conditioning is because nights tended to be cool in the past, and so people left windows and doors open while sleeping creating drafts and letting the masonry cool.
But in the last ~15 years nights have been as hot as days at times, and so this strategy is no longer effective: you're cooked at night as much as you're cooked during the day during the heat domes. So the all-the-AC-all-the-time thinking of the US may be excessive, nowadays so is the never-AC thinking of many people.
You don't need to get down to 22C, but least <27C will save the lives of many people, especially the elderly (unless France wants to save on pensions?).
Unfortunately, there are many areas of the US where humidity is the real reason for running the AC so much. In places like the Mid-Atlantic states you might get a month or so in spring and fall where you mostly don't need AC or heat. Once summer actually hits, it seems rare to have a day where it's under 85F and under 70% humidity. The south is even worse.
My home though appears to have very limited air flow in the attic-space. I'd like to get those "twirly things" installed on the roof to bring the attic-space air temperature down.
There is no replacement for air conditioning. It's a modern marvel. People who hate it should also refuse to have heating in winter.
Further I put a jumper on in the winter, have insulation in my house, have curtains etc to keep heat in. What's wrong with having passive ways of keeping warm or cool?
There's nothing wrong with the passive ways, when they are enough.
Clearly it is much different than heating in winter; the latter is a matter of survival, while the former is mostly a matter of comfort.
One could indeed argue that in the precarious state we are in, expending energy for unnecessary comfort should be minimized, something that passive designs can aid.
As we also try to minimize energy expenditure of heating, through insulation and other passive means.
There really is nothing "unnecessary" about the comfort of AC. Just like there isn't anything unnecessary about the comfort of heating in winter. People can at worst die without it, and they do. When your environment is uncomfortable, that is your body telling you that the environment is wrong, and it has millions of years of wisdom.
> Modern air conditioning isn’t the only way to keep cool in the summer
TFA is unobjectionable, but you've taken it as an attack on your identity as an enjoyer of AC. Nobody here is stopping you. Nobody here has called you far-right - you have Streisanded yourself.
HN tries to be better than this, which takes real effort from all of us - including me, including you - to rise above our atavistic identity crises. Bearing up a straw man is unedifying, please don't.
One thing I'll never understand is not having shutters, only curtains. I live in France, almost everyone has shutters. But in other countries it's often different. I lived in Thailand for a couple of years and had only curtains, so the sun would still get past the window pane, heat the curtain, and the AC would then have take this heat outside again. This seemed massively inefficient.
I thing the best compromise is using whatever traditional, passive means of cooling we can, and then AC as needed.
> By what measurement? […]
The measure of the air's temperature.
It does not matter if you have shutters: if the air outside is 30C then eventually the air inside will eventually get to 30C (good insulation will simply mean it takes longer).
If your outside is >30C then the only way to keep your inside <30C is to transfer the heat (which an AC does via an evaporator, refrigerant, and a condensor).
Instead of adding a 2nd condensing unit, try adding spray foam and double glazed windows. I can keep my 2400 sqft Texas home ice cold with a small 3 ton system. There are similarly sized homes right down the street from me with 5+ tons of capacity across multiple condensing units.
The biggest problem with oversized cooling systems is latent heat removal. It's much better to have a slightly undersized system running constantly through the hottest part of the day than it is to have a very powerful system running with 50% duty cycle. It's also significantly better for system life (capacitors last much longer this way). During summer months, my hvac system cycles maybe one time between the hours of 10am and 10pm.
We are also (rightly) suspicious of people attempting to remove or restrict some personally favored appliance or tool. Often the early stages of this process appear as social media influence campaigns about how the thing in question is unnecessary or harmful. (I don’t think AC is at risk of being restricted here, but I can see why others might be overly protective.)
Many northern areas of the US still have buildings without AC, mostly older buildings.
I actually don't have a picture from outside, as it was a bit warm at the time I was taking the picture! It was meant to be a version 1 and immediately replaced with a pvc frame and a pair of hooks to install it without a step ladder in the morning, but it turned out to be pretty robust so far, and I ended up leaving it up for several days during extended heatwaves.
Don't know about "Europe", but here in France this is the main reason. Even if you live in an apartment you own, you have to fight multiple bureaucracies (city / HOA) to be allowed to install a split AC. Detached houses tend to fare better, but, even there, you should make sure you don't step over some arcane permit-requiring line.
The result is people adapt how they can, usually buying portable ACs that have terrible efficiency, so the whole "AC's are bad 'cause they consume a lot of electricity" consideration goes out the window. See how these are sold-out everywhere and people are fighting over the units when available.
Bonus points for not being able to run it at night if your windows aren't at a certain height above street level, because no one in their right mind would sleep with a street-level window open.
I do not think AC preference has anything to do with political beliefs, and I despise the "us and them" tribal mentality.
You can survive the winter in a house with a 5 centigrade temperature by putting on a lot of clothing and continuously drinking hot tea, huddling together under thick blankets. So would you have a problem with those who heat their houses more than that on this warming planet?
AC full on without other measures and passive thermal control techniques are no only two available options, one can combine them.
FWIW, it isn't either/or - we practice keeping the shades, curtains, and windows drawn when it is hot, open when it is cool.... and we have air conditioning. Best of both worlds.
Yes, it's best to keep the heat out. Good insulation helps, but no insulation is perfect and eventually (thanks to the second law of thermodynamics) some will get in.
https://blog.myheritage.com/2018/08/good-old-summertime-our-...
Can you name one? That isn't the same argument as against all needless waste?
What I'm seeing is we can't even talk about shutter designs without talking about AC instead. Using AC may not harm society, but some people knowing about it kinda does.
Never mind that these same people would go absolutely out of their minds if you suggested tearing down and remodeling most cities, which are basically radiators at night since there's concrete everywhere.
So instead of trying to somehow mitigate the issue of "AC heating the outside air", by, for example, installing the outside units on top of the buildings, so most heat wouldn't be at street level where people walk around, many people who can't breathe in their apartments just use portable ACs which dump the heat right outside their windows. Bonus points for these being very unefficient, so now electricity consumption is even higher.
In the specific case of France, they also tend to forget that most of our electricity is essentially carbon-free.
Which is not great because it's wasteful, so you're making the same "moralistic argument". Unless your point is just that it's hypocritical, of course.
Maybe electrical energy is massively subsidized or just cheap in general. Installing shutters can be a large up-front investment, especially when installed by somebody else. It may take many years of burning energy with an AC to earn that back.
Also maybe the home isn't even yours, but you are renting. The owner doesn't care about your energy bill.
A cursory web search tells me shutters can influence the DPE ("diagnostic de performance énergétique".) A bad rating means you can't rent your property.
https://immobilier.lefigaro.fr/article/seulement-54-de-logem...
There’s definitely a cultural or historical component. In my experience shutters are extremely common, near universal, in southern Europe but much less so in northern. Which is a shame because a modern PVC roller shutter, well installed and with insulated slats, also does wonders in winter.
And before industrialization, cities were administrative centers and not production centers. The king or ruler and all the elite would go away in the summer to escape the heat, and then there wasn't much reason for everyone else to stay in town. And it didn't cost money to go stay with your relatives in the countryside or seaside. But you'd probably have to help out with farm work.
From a quick search, older versions of the DPE ignored shutters, modern ones take them in account and their effect ranges from neutral to positive depending on details (materials, insulation, fit). It’s not entirely clear if both high seasons are considered (insulation and fit I’d think a lot less critical in summer).
I’m in central Texas and it isn’t uncommon for rooftop solar to generate enough power to cover central a/c. Peak sun and peak a/c happen at the same time.