There are two ways that air conditioners can harm the environment. The first way is if older types of cooling fluid escape into the atmosphere. These fluids, called CFCs (or chlorofluorocarbons), react with ozone in the atmosphere. This makes it harder for the ozone layer to shield us from intense direct sunlight. The good news is that countries around the world have agreed to stop using CFCs and switch to less harmful chemicals.

The second way that air conditioners affect the climate is just by being run. An air conditioner cools the air in the room it's used, but to do that, it also heats something else even more (usually air outside). Overall, they use electricity and turn it into heat, just like any other electrical machine. So, like most things, you should use air conditioning in moderation.

Air conditioners use a lot of electricity. The process for making electricity is what is bad for the environment, so any device that uses a lot of electricity is bad for the environment. The majority of electricity is made from burning fossil fuels such as oil and coal. When these fuels are burned, they release carbon dioxide which is a greenhouse gas and therefore contributes to global warming. The cooling mechanism in an air conditioner could contain chemicals that could be harmful to the ozone layer, but most of these chemicals have been discontinued. Also, if the air conditioner is disposed of correctly, these chemicals shouldn’t be an issue. Other than that, there is nothing inherently harmful about an air conditioner.

If the electricity used to power the air conditioner was from renewable sources such as wind or solar, then it likely wouldn’t be bad for the environment or contribute to global warming anymore.

The biggest way the air conditioners affect our environment is the use of electricity. If an air conditioned city uses a electricity from a water dam or nuclear energy, then the impact would be relatively low, however if the city uses coal to generate the electricity then using the air conditioner would have a bigger environmental impact.

The state of California uses some hydro-electrical and nuclear power sources, but mainly uses natural gas to source electricity.

Air conditioners use energy and there is some pollution when energy is produced. You want to use an energy efficient air conditioner to minimize this problem.

Air conditioners also produce heat. The energy used to make cold air also makes some heat as wasted energy, outside your house. Again, you want to use an energy efficient air conditioner to minimize this problem.

An ordinary electric fan is the best thing to cool you in terms of the environment and global warming. But if you need an air conditioner, don't keep it on all the time, and keep the temperature sort of warm, so you're not using too much energy. Think about winter, when you like the house warm.

Air conditioners have to get rid of heat, which means they have to move heat somewhere else. This requires the machines to do work, which takes energy. That energy can be acquired from an environmentally harmless source (such as solar power), but more often they are powered by electricity from coal-burning power plants. Coal, as a fossil fuel, releases carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when burned, thereby contributing to global warming.

Air conditioners contain CFC's and HCFCs, which are the cooling agents inside your AC. These cooling agents can punch holes in our ozone layer when they leak. Leaks in your air conditioner can happen over time. These leaks not only result in your ac no longer cooling, but also release the ozone harming chemicals into the air.