Here’s an instant classic from the far-left UK Guardian:

She wants you to know that even though she has an air conditioner, at least she feels guilty about it!

AC is quantifiably bad, but I think it’s also philosophically problematic. Cooling offers comfort, making the unbearable bearable, at least for now. That happens at a community level (no one is really disputing we should keep the very old, the very young and the vulnerable cool), but also individually. When you can buy a personal bubble of coolness and not truly feel the heat, the screaming urgency to tackle the collective issue of a world on fire can recede slightly.

And this is where I have to fess up. I actually have AC – a little freestanding unit we use only in the evenings, maybe 10 times a year. We also have solar panels and a battery, which helps me sleep at night, but the cool helps more. If the government came for my AC, I wouldn’t demand they “pry it out of my cold, dead hands”, as one Republican said of his gas stove, but at times like these, I’m deeply, guiltily glad of it.