You should still feel some guilt for the heat pollution your air conditioning causes for those outside your house, esp. in an urban area.
Can you please elaborate more on pollution from air conditioning equipment and heat pumps. I was thinking they are closed systems.
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Or, we could lobby politicians to actually improve the lives of their constituents by making climate control appliances so affordable and ubiquitous that it's no longer an issue and we can stop accidental deaths attributed to heat. More green spaces can also help mitigate the impact.
The reality is that a lot of old western europe was built for a climate that no longer exists. Houses are built to prioritize holding on to heat and rebuilding entire cities is definitely not possible if we're already bickering so much about adding heat pumps.
Yes, heat pumps may create a rise in temperatures in cities, but there are other things we can do as a society to also lower temperatures as to create a net-neutral impact.
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This is heat that would have escaped the house anyway
No, air conditioning units generate heat (that is how they cool!) and do contribute to local warming. Without AC the house reaches equilibrium with outside. With AC the house is cooled and that heat has to go somewhere.
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Right, but assuming conservation of energy holds then the net should stay the same, right? Unless solar panels have lower albedo than the roof they’re sitting on (considering how many roofs are flat black tar that seems unlikely…)