Cooling is less bad for the environment than heating. The reason being, cooling moves heat from one place to another - it does increase heat overall, but only from its inefficiencies, it’s not the goal. Heating, in most cases, is just creating heat. Unless you have a heat pump, you’re burning some fuel to create heat, which adds a great deal of heat to the environment.
Well, air-con cooling and heat pump are basically the same, the plan (not yet reality) is that we’ll all transition to renewable-powered heat pumps. In either case, insulation matters - I was surprised when staying in Brazil (decade ago), how rare was double glazing (despite noisy streets). Anyway I still think ski-slopes in the hot desert, around mega-cities grown on oil and aviation-hubs, is crazy.
Cooling is less bad for the environment than heating. The reason being, cooling moves heat from one place to another - it does increase heat overall, but only from its inefficiencies, it’s not the goal. Heating, in most cases, is just creating heat. Unless you have a heat pump, you’re burning some fuel to create heat, which adds a great deal of heat to the environment.
Well, air-con cooling and heat pump are basically the same, the plan (not yet reality) is that we’ll all transition to renewable-powered heat pumps. In either case, insulation matters - I was surprised when staying in Brazil (decade ago), how rare was double glazing (despite noisy streets). Anyway I still think ski-slopes in the hot desert, around mega-cities grown on oil and aviation-hubs, is crazy.