SNA (Bangkok) — Air conditioning has long been viewed as a luxury which makes people’s lives more comfortable in the hot summer months, but increasingly in the era of the climate crisis, analysts are pointing out that it has become a matter of life-and-death, and thus access to air conditioning should be regarded as a human right in the late 21st century.

This year has been one of the hottest on record, and the last eight years have been the hottest in modern times: England just recorded it highest-ever temperatures; Australia has battled massive wildfires; and South Asian heat waves have become positively deadly.

Infants and the elderly are particularly vulnerable. The World Health Organization (WHO) has stated that “from 1998-2017 more than 166,000 people have died due to heatwaves.” These heatwaves are now becoming longer in duration and more frequent.

High temperatures are known to put basic physical and cognitive human abilities at risk–it can result in stroke, cancer, swelling, cramps, headache, weakness, lethargy, and even sudden death. Children’s learning has been negatively impacted, with attention deficits being a primary concern.

The US National Weather Service has stated that “heat kills more people than floods, lightning, tornadoes, and hurricanes combined.” The rising temperatures are believed to have put more than a billion people’s health and prosperity at significant risk; and with no access to cooling devices, the heat can become unbearable.

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration stated that “66% of all wildfire damage from the year 1980 has actually occurred in the last five years.”

In May, four researchers published an opinion article in Scientific American arguing that air conditioning should be regarded as a fundamental human right: “As the world heats up,” they said, “billions need air conditioning. In the age of climate change, it is a necessity for human survival.”

They also noted that there is an “enormous gap in cooling availability… between rich and poor people and nations.”

Only 12% of the population in world’s hottest areas have access to air conditioning. But in Japan and the United States, that figure is around 90%. A US study showed that risk of death on a very hot day has fallen 80% since the mid-20th century, largely due to widespread use of air conditioning in that nation. Indeed, The Lancet released a report last year estimating that air conditioning saved about 195,000 American lives among people aged 65 or over in 2019 alone.

Poorer nations, of course, have not seen such a drastic improvement, and the number of deaths globally caused by a lack of air conditioning probably runs into the millions, though precise estimates are not yet available.

On the other hand, air conditioning can itself contribute to greenhouse gas emissions which fuel a further deterioration of the climate. The International Energy Agency believes that the world may add “another 4 billion air conditioning units by 2050, largely driven by demand in India.”

Excessively hot temperatures also disrupt work productivity, resulting in major economic losses for poorer countries in particular.

In this context, former Prime Minister of Singapore Lee Kuan Yew once stated that, in his opinion, air conditioning was the most important invention for his country’s rapid development.

Rachel Kyte, special representative to the United Nations Secretary-General for Sustainable Energy for All, asserted in 2018 that “cooling is now a human right, not a luxury.”

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