So can I use my air-conditioner guilt free?
Not quite. Air-conditioning presents other problems: As of 2009, nearly 90 percent of American homes have air-conditioners, which account for about 6 percent of all the country’s residential energy use. All that air-conditioning releases about 100 million tons of carbon dioxide each year.
Short Answers to Hard Questions About Climate Change
The issue can be overwhelming. The science is complicated. We get it. This is your cheat sheet.
According to historians and others, the widespread availability of air-conditioning has allowed for more development in the hotter parts of the country — the South and the Southwest — where air-conditioning use is the highest in the country.
And once developers could rely on heating and cooling technologies, they often built less energy-efficient homes, which means that you have to use more air-conditioning or heating to get to the temperature you want.
