Does the Pope Use Air Conditioning?

It’s reasonable to warn that technological progress could be harmful. It’s unreasonable to think it can be stopped.

Pope Leo XIV in Acerra, Italy, on May 23. Photo: Italy Photo Press/ZUMA Press

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That roaring you can probably hear is coming from the portable air-conditioning unit that is running at full blast in my study. Britain is currently experiencing a record-breaking heat wave, with a high of almost 95 degrees in London Tuesday, and our house isn’t designed for it.

When our housing estate was built eight years ago, the developers obeyed energy-efficiency regulations that ensure buildings are easily kept warm in winter. They also obeyed government regulations that strongly discourage the installation of air conditioning. Only 6.5% of British homes have built-in air conditioning, compared with 66% in the U.S. Our buildings are typically designed to retain as much heat as possible. For those of us without proper AC, the only option during a heat wave is to use a noisy and inefficient portable unit with a plastic tube that you stick out of the window. Welcome to “Nozzle Britain.”

Air conditioning is lifesaving technology. The lack of AC means that Europe’s death rates climb far more steeply than the U.S.’s during heat waves. By some calculations, the annual European death toll from hot weather is higher than the American death toll from guns.

And yet there is resistance from European governments who are intent on reducing energy consumption for environmental reasons. We find ourselves in a tragic spot: Heat waves seem to be becoming more frequent and extreme as a consequence of man-made climate change, but we can endure these heat waves only through the use of a technology that contributes to the very problem it is trying to solve.

This conundrum isn’t unusual. The nature of technological innovation is that its consequences are unpredictable, and new technologies can often generate problems that then demand further technological solutions. Natural systems are too complex for us to fully understand, as are social systems, which means that any technological intervention—however well intentioned—can generate enormous disruption.

One would have thought, for instance, that the invention of reliable contraception in the form of the birth-control pill would have caused illegitimacy rates to go down, given that it became easier for women to avoid unwanted pregnancies. But once it became clear that women had the power to control their fertility, the nature of heterosexual relationships changed and men became less willing to commit to raising an “oops baby.” When motherhood became a biological choice for women, fatherhood became a social choice for men. Technology shocks are capricious.

This week, Pope Leo XIV issued an encyclical discussing a technological revolution on which we seem to be at the cusp: the mass rollout of AI. He offered a perfectly reasonable set of observations. While AI holds much promise, it might also cause great harm, and we shouldn’t welcome any technology that reduces human beings “to mere cogs in a system driven toward ever greater efficiency.”

This encyclical was deliberately issued on the 135th anniversary of an encyclical issued by Pope Leo XIII in 1891 as a response to the social turmoil caused by the Industrial Revolution. Did this intervention hold back the onrushing transformation of industrialization? Of course not. That’s not how technological revolutions work. One can admire the intellectual and moral insights of both Pope Leos, while also recognizing that it is very difficult—likely impossible—to dissuade humanity from innovating.

This despite the fact that we often fear innovation. Mythology abounds with stories about techno-optimists who were punished for their hubris, and we haven’t been treated to much in the way of optimistic science fiction since “Star Trek” and “The Jetsons” were on TV. Maybe this is because, as the tech entrepreneur Peter Thiel has argued, humanity was so collectively appalled by the creation of nuclear weapons that we lost our capacity to feel hopeful about what science can do for us.

In 2003, the futurist Alex Steffen coined the term “dark green” to describe environmentalist groups like Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil who are so opposed to technological innovation that they don’t want to soften the social effects of the Industrial Revolution, a la Pope Leo XIII, they want to undo it entirely. They are in opposition to what Mr. Steffen described as the “bright green” branch of environmentalism that regards technological innovation as the solution to environmental challenges.

The bright greens observe Britain’s miserably hot homes and say our lack of techno-optimism is leaving us stuck in limbo. We are suffering from the negative effects of the Industrial Revolution in the form of climate change, but government reluctance to embrace a bright green agenda leaves us incapable of technologizing our way out. Nuclear energy, for instance, would give us the cheap, clean energy necessary to bless every home with air conditioning. Maybe AI could help us to meet this challenge, too. In other words, the bright greens say we need to go further and faster with technology, rather than shy away from it.

The criticism of the bright greens is the same criticism we could level at anyone who welcomes the arrival of AI: They don’t pay enough heed to the inherently treacherous nature of technology. When tech entrepreneur Marc Andreessen insists in his “Techno-Optimist Manifesto” that “there is no material problem—whether created by nature or by technology—that cannot be solved with more technology,” an ungenerous critic might be reminded of Homer Simpson’s faith that alcohol is both “the cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

But my question to these critics is this: What else do you suggest?

I know what the dark environmentalists are proposing. They want us to deindustrialize deliberately and go back to the premodern era, adopting a radically techno-pessimist position. “The existing political and economic system is set to destroy civilization and much if not all life on earth if allowed to continue” says Gail Bradbrook, the co-founder of Extinction Rebellion. The radical environmentalist and philosopher Derrick Jensen puts it still more plainly: “I want to bring down civilization.”

They will never find popular support for such a proposal. Some of us might be willing to abandon the more garish baubles made available by modernity, but almost no one truly wants to abandon the fundamentals: safe drinking water, antibiotics, electric lighting, plentiful food, obstetrics and the rest. No one wants to return to the Malthusian trap, not even antimodern groups like the Amish. You can tell, because when their children are gravely ill, they abandon the old ways and take them to modern hospitals. So do the dark green environmentalists. The revealed preference among humans is that we desperately want to live in technological societies.

As I write this, uncountable numbers of people are on the move across the world, having left their homelands to risk their lives in the hope of reaching places where modern technology provides the kind of safety and comfort that our ancestors could barely have imagined. Meanwhile, voters in every country may express trepidation about the effects of AI, but they also demand economic growth, not because they have been bamboozled by free market ideologues, but because they know that rich countries are better places to live. Poverty is the human norm—we have escaped it only recently, and only through the use of technology. We can’t go back now.

Which means that the only way out is through. And yes, that will probably include the use of AI. And yes, there will no doubt be consequences of this technology that are both unintended and undesirable. Just as Pope Leo urges us, we should try to help the people whose lives are turned upside down by this technological revolution. But we can’t hold it back, at least not for long.

Ms. Perry is a Free Expression columnist at WSJ Opinion.