Sweltering Europeans Give Air Conditioning a Skeptical Embrace
MILAN - During Europe's heat wave last month, Floriana Peroni's vintage clothing store had to close for a week. A truck of rented generators blocked her door as they fed power to the central Roman neighborhood hit by a blackout as temperatures surged. The main culprit: air conditioning.
The period - in which temperatures hit 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) - coincided with peak electricity use that ca