[laurencerowe]

I think it is simply because in most of Europe air conditioning is unnecessary for comfort 95% of the year. Here in San Francisco most homes don't have air conditioning either, but there might be a week or two where it gets very hot and we just put up with the barbaric technological primitiveness.

Much of the US is extremely unpleasant without air-conditioning for a substantial portion of the year so of course everyone living in those parts installs it.

[SoftTalker]

Yes in many parts of the US it's not just the heat but the humidity. One summer I tried going without AC as much as possible to see how much it would change my electric bill. I could handle the temperature most of the time but the humidity especially at night started giving me mold problems in the house. Cleaned that up and went back to using the AC and no more mold. Not sure how people controlled this back in the pre-AC days, maybe just a lot more cleaning.

[asdff]

My parents still don’t use AC. The windows stay open all summer unless there is a rainstorm. Whole house fan is turned on at night to draw in cooler air. Much time spent in the cooler basement if you are going to be hanging at home. At night you are basically sleeping naked on top of your fitted sheet with one or two window unit fans circulating air. Maybe another fan pointed directly at you. Basement had some dehumidifiers and afaik that was the only problem moisture area.

[tzs]

If you are OK with the heat maybe a dehumidifier would be able to address the humidity problem while still saving electricity compare to the AC.

[SoftTalker]

A dehumidifier is basically an air conditioner that exhausts its heat back into the room. It will make the air warmer (but dryer).