Other countries often refer to the U.S. as an oil junky. But apparently the nation’s addiction to air conditioning is just as strong. 

And it’s taking a toll on the environment, Yale Environment 360 reports. 

The United States has long consumed more energy each year for air conditioning than the rest of the world combined. In fact, we use more electricity for cooling than the entire continent of Africa, home to a billion people, consumes for all purposes. Between 1993 and 2005, with summers growing hotter and homes larger, energy consumed by residential air conditioning in the U.S. doubled, and it leaped another 20 percent by 2010. The climate impact of air conditioning our buildings and vehicles is now that of almost half a billion metric tons of carbon dioxide per year.

Read the full story here.

You can read Civil Beat’s “undercover investigation” of AC use in government office building’s here.