Do you know who Willis Havilland Carrier is? No? Maybe you should. He’s the engineer who, way back in 1902, invented what we now call air conditioning. His invention has been cooling American houses and businesses ever since. [some emphasis, links added]
But it’s also done something even more important: Saved hundreds of thousands of lives.
Think that’s hyperbole? It isn’t.
As America prepares for yet another long, hot summer, most of us will stay indoors to work and relax. Why? When the torrid weather arrives, we simply turn on our air conditioning and immediately feel cool air filling our rooms, making us comfortable.
But comfort is a bonus to AC’s real impact: saving lives.
Heat is a killer, as we’ve noted before. Here in the U.S., where air conditioning is found in nearly 90% of all homes and virtually all office buildings, deaths from excessive heat are relatively rare.
In 2024, there were 2,394 deaths from excessive heat in the U.S.
Compare the U.S. total to the EU, where there are regularly far more heat deaths than in the U.S. Last year, for example, from June through September, the EU had 62,755 heat-related deaths, or 26 times more than the U.S. had in 2024.
Here’s another shocking statistic: The EU heat-death total is more than the total U.S. deaths annually from gun violence (44,447 for all of 2024).
Ponder that for a minute.
Of course, leftist bureaucrats immediately blame “climate change” for the excessive heat deaths, claiming this shows why we should impose even more stringent “green” climate regulations on both industry and individuals.
But most of the U.S. is, in fact, hotter than Europe during the summer. So EU deaths aren’t due to “global warming,” or any other green nonsense.
No, sadly for Europe, the high number of heat-related deaths is a political choice, not climate change.
The insane pursuit of “net zero” climate rules has ruined the EU’s regional economy, creating energy-based poverty for many of its 450 million citizens. Europe now seriously lags the U.S. in GDP growth, productivity, and standard of living, largely due to its disastrous green energy policies.
“Electricity costs there are, on average, about two to three times higher than those in the United States, and Europe is generally less willing to use energy-intensive appliances like air conditioning in pursuit of its climate goals,” Dimitri Bolt of Townhall wrote recently.
“So not only is the continent reliant on foreign adversaries for much of its energy, but the limited energy it does have is not used to prevent heat-related deaths.”
EU bureaucrats would rather kill people than drill for oil, burn coal, build more nuclear power plants, or do any number of other things to create energy abundance and lower prices.
Meanwhile, you can bet none of the green bureaucrats in the EU will sit in non-air-conditioned offices during the sweltering summer.
Read rest at Issues & Insights
It appears that US gun violence is becoming a measurement by which to compare deaths from suboptimal temperatures. People need to know that 78% of deaths from guns in the US are suicide. Each time I renew my permit to carry a concealed weapon the state provides this fact to support safe gun storage, which is a good thing.