Summer in India it was always hot. However, it is increasingly testing the limits of human endurance. As temperatures soared above 40 degrees in recent weeks, more than a dozen people have died in the outbreak in central India and thousands of hospitals have been flooded with symptoms of heatstroke. Ehundreds of schools have closed and mercury is still on the rise: Temperatures will hover around 45 degrees this weekend.

The fastest solution is relatively affordable, at least in the short term. Demand for air conditioners is growing rapidly in markets such as India, China, Indonesia and the Philippines. One estimate is that there will be another 1 billion air conditioners on the planet by the end of the decade. What is good for public health and economic efficiency may be bad for the climate and the global agreement to phase out the most harmful coolants.

This development has far-reaching implications for public health, wealth and economic development. Buying an air conditioner is mandatory in low-income countries. Many people suffer from poor sleep and cognitive decline, which burdens their productivity and therefore lowers their economic bottom line.

In a study that looked at thousands of Indian factories with different refrigeration settings, scientists found that productivity drops by about 2 percent for every degree Celsius increase in temperature.

But air conditioners threaten to exacerbate the climate crisis, whose temperature is one of the effects they alleviate. Most units use a refrigerant that is more harmful than carbon dioxide. In India, for example, most people can only buy the cheapest and most energy efficient devices.

In Delhi’s working-class neighborhoods, access to air conditioning is a matter of survival for many. Pigu Haldar, who works as a maid, says her shack turns into an oven in the summer. The tin roof gets hot enough to cook roti on it.

When her son was born in 2016, she suffered from the heat. To afford cheap air conditioning, Haldar stopped buying clothes, cut back on food, took out a loan, and doubled the number of houses she cleaned.

For India, the challenge is to introduce cleaner technologies before millions of young consumers buy the most expensive air conditioners, committing themselves to using them for another ten years.

Source: Bloomberg.