[riprowan]

Can confirm: ~100M Americans run A/C all summer, and also in spring and fall, too. Most American homes have central A/C, so you cannot easily "enable" it only for the room you're in. The typical supermarket or office is ~20C in summer, many homes are kept 20-22C.

I never realized how much I hated this until I started spending a lot of time in a warm country that uses AC sparingly.

However in the hottest parts of Texas the summers are brutally hot and humid even at night, and the insects are a force of nature. AC is kind of a requirement. I would imagine that if AC were magically outlawed tomorrow, 90% of the population or more of most of the South would pack up and leave by the end of August.