Academics date the invention of air conditioning to the Florida Panhandle in the 1850s. Now, roughly 90 percent of U.S. homes have some form of air conditioning, according to U.S. Census data.
For decades in Europe, leaders and scholars scoffed at U.S. reliance on air conditioning as another example of American excess. In 1992, Cambridge economist Gwyn Prins warned that “physical addiction to air-conditioned air is the most pervasive and least noticed epidemic in modern America.”
Air-conditioned offices are commonplace in Europe, but it is exceedingly rare to find AC units in homes. According to one industry estimate, just 3 percent of homes in Germany and less than 5 percent of homes in France have air conditioning. In Britain, government estimates suggest that less than 5 percent of homes in England have AC units installed.