We are the first generation to purchase winter in the middle of summer and perhaps the last with the opportunity to protect nature’s cooling systems before they disappear.
As the planet grows hotter, our response is not to cool the world around us but to cool the boxes we live in. In our pursuit of artificial temperature, we are sacrificing nature’s cooling systems that once belonged to all of us. The question before us is no longer how we stay cool, but whether cooling itself can ever be sustainable and just.
Every summer, Pakistan breaks another heat record. Regions like Punjab and Sindh experience long and intense summers, with temperatures frequently exceeding 40°C. Heatwaves are becoming more frequent and severe. Yet, our response to rising temperatures has become increasingly predictable: more air conditioners, more electricity consumption, and more concrete homes sealed off from the world outside. Air conditioning has become the symbol of comfort and survival. Beneath this comfort, however, lies an uncomfortable truth that Pakistan does not merely have a heat crisis; it has a cooling crisis.
For centuries, buildings across Pakistan were designed to live with the climate. Thick walls, courtyards, verandas, shade trees, and cross-ventilation kept homes cool. Summer nights belonged to everyone. Families slept on rooftops beneath the open sky, enjoying cool night air. Cooling was not purchased; it was part of how we lived.
Today, we have forgotten natural cooling. Many of our homes have become concrete boxes that depend entirely on mechanical cooling. We have forgotten that cool air can come from trees and climate-responsive architecture. Cooling has become something we purchase rather than something we collectively share.
In 2018, Pakistan accounted for approximately 0.7% of the global demand for air conditioning. Researchers project that Pakistan has the world’s fifth-largest potential demand for air conditioning. If this growing demand is met solely through technologies, Pakistan risks deepening both climate and cooling injustice. Air conditioning is already the largest contributor to emissions within Pakistan’s cooling sectors, accounting for approximately 8.22 million tons of carbon emissions.
Pakistan’s air conditioning crisis goes beyond rising temperatures. It reflects three interconnected realities: heat, inequality, and cooling injustice. The problem is not air conditioning itself, but the mindset it creates. We are increasingly living inside artificial climates while becoming disconnected from one outside our walls. In cities such as Lahore, one can experience winter-like temperatures inside a home while the temperature outside exceeds 40°C. We have created artificial winters inside our private spaces while the world outside continues to heat up. Comfort has become increasingly privatized.
The consequences of this crisis are not distributed equally. The people contributing most to climate change are not the ones suffering most from extreme heat. Higher-income households can afford multiple air conditioners and insulate themselves from heat, while millions of people continue to work, travel, and sleep in unbearable heat. Research suggests that only 11% of Pakistani households own an air conditioner, while electric fans remain the country’s most common cooling technology. For many families, even paying the electricity bill for a fan is a monthly struggle.
People with low incomes who sleep on rooftops can no longer find relief there. Heatwaves have stolen the cool nights that once belonged to everyone. One household debates whether its air conditioner should be set at 22 °C or 24 °C while another cannot afford to keep a fan running throughout the night. One enjoys artificial winter while another endures extreme heat.
What we all deserve is not an air-conditioned home, but cooling justice. Cooling justice demands a healthy and sustainable cooling environment for all life rather than merely cooling rooms for the few. It requires shaded neighborhoods, climate-responsive buildings, greener cities, and protections of natural cooling systems.
As temperatures exceed 40°C across Pakistan, surging dependence on air conditioning is widening the gap between those who can afford to stay cool and those who cannot, making climate-responsive architecture, urban forests, and shaded public spaces an urgent matter of justice rather than comfort. Photo by Tahamie Farooqui on Unsplash.
Importantly, cooling justice extends beyond human communities. Rising temperatures contribute to habitat degradation, biodiversity loss, glacial melting, forest fires, and ecological disruptions. Pakistan recorded 317 forest fire events in 2024 and 146 in 2025, destroying thousands of acres of forest land. As forests disappear and temperatures rise, we lose not only biodiversity but also nature’s most effective cooling system. Healthy ecosystems are cooling infrastructure in their own right. They regulate temperatures and make communities more resilient to climate change. Cooling justice is therefore not merely a human concern; it is also an ecological one.
Cooling justice is climate justice; both depend on a shared and livable climate. Climate justice without cooling justice is not possible, and without shared climate, there is no cooling justice. Yet, our response to the environmental crisis is increasingly technological. Our answer to heat is air conditioning. Our answer to polluted air is air purifiers. Increasingly, we are buying basic elements of life that nature once provided us freely. But how many machines will we need in the future? Will our future generation have to buy cool and fresh air because we failed to protect them today?
In 2021, Pakistan recognized the importance of sustainable cooling in its updated Nationally Determined Contribution, and committed to adopt a Pakistan Cooling Action Plan by 2026. The Plan seeks to manage current and future cooling demand, reduce inequalities, and decrease emissions from cooling sectors while fulfilling Pakistan’s commitments under the Paris Agreement. These are important and necessary interventions; however, Plan discussions around cooling often begin with technology and end with technology.
Cooling justice requires us to look beyond cooling technologies alone. The growing demand for cooling is not simply the result of climate change; it is also a product of environmental choices. Urban expansion continues to replace trees with concrete, wetlands with housing schemes, and open spaces with commercial developments. Heat-trapping infrastructure is rapidly expanding while natural cooling systems are disappearing. The result is hotter cities that demand more artificial cooling.
The answer to Pakistan’s cooling crisis is not simply increasing the supply of cooling technologies, but making cooling accessible without any appliances. We need climate-responsive architecture, greener homes and neighborhoods, shaded public space, more trees, urban forests, and natural cooling systems that work with nature rather than against it. Cooling should not be a private luxury enclosed within four walls; it should be a shared public good.
Cooling justice, therefore, is not about placing an air conditioner in every home. It is about ensuring that private comfort does not create public suffering. The future of Pakistan cannot be artificial winter for some and unbearable summers for others. It must be built upon fairness for both the people and the planet.
