“For years we have known that air conditioning protects people from extreme heat, but we could only guess by how much because the available data told us who owned an air conditioner, not who could actually afford to run one,” said Kai Chen, associate professor of epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health.
The strong protective effect of AC against heat-attributable mortality indicates the public health necessity of addressing urban heat by making AC affordable and greening urban spaces, the authors noted.
Ironically not open access facepalm
people have replied but heat causes way more than ac. many heat source directly make greenhouse gases and those that don’t use more electricity if your in a cold climate than ac does in a hot climate. So like I live in an area that is cold in the winter and can be very hot in the summer. I have electric heat and a/c. heating on a day where the air temp is freezing is way more expensive than cooling in a day where you can fry an egg on the sidewalk. and that fry and egg day is way less often than freezing days. so you should stop using heat before stopping ac.