Asked why Europe has so little air conditioning, Ibrahim, who had just moved to the US, points to UK planning rules. She sees them as a regulatory cause of Europe's housing and heat problems.
like Great Britain where there is no air conditioning.
It's so true. Why is there, what is that? What is what is with the no air conditioning in Europe? Is it just a it's just no?
It's it's regulation. It's it's so crazy. I was um I moved to the US in January of this year and I went back to the UK in June because I was you know I was trying to renew my passport and there were a couple of like admin things I had to do with my visa and I came back to my parents house and I was like it's so hot. How are you living like this? And they're like, what do you mean? It's always been like this in the summer and I realized, oh my God, I've become a privileged American because I'm so used to the air conditioning. So I looked it all up and I was trying to figure out exactly why. It depends on the country, but in the UK, it is basically illegal to build new housing with fitted air conditioning units. In order to do it, in order to get approval to do it, you have to prove that you have tried sufficient ventilation. So you've tried to open windows. You have to prove that you've tried to plant some trees to create some shade. You have to basically fill in so many documents. It's all bureaucracy. It's all planning regulation. And different European countries have different rules, but it is a lot of it is environmental rubbish. It's, you know.
Wait, so to build a new dwelling, it has to, with ducted air conditioning, you need a special sign-off from
your development application. To build anything in European countries, you have to get an enormous amount of, you have to jump to so many hoops. I mean, in the UK, there would be jokes about how the cost of figuring out all the bureaucracy, paying the lawyers, figuring out, you know, how to…
It can be like that here, but I mean, there are, I can usually understand the rationale. Like, it'll be, oh, this is a heritage area, so we don't want the buildings to look really different from the old buildings in the street. Or, you know, this is, we want to make sure that it's not damaging to…