For the first time in the UK

I turned on the airconditioning in the car. I didn't realize it even had AC. The weather here in my corner of Essex has been hot, sticky, and humid--think Philly in mid-August.

I don't feel the supreme guilt here like in DE to turn on the AC. I remember one of my (American) work colleagues--his wife had bad allergies so he started the car a few minutes in advance of her coming outside, so that it would be cooled off. A German promptly walked over to his car after one minute and knocked on the window and said something in German. My colleague spoke almost no German, so the fellow then translated it to English for him--
'Thank you for taking care for my environment and turning off your car when you are not driving." Different mentality I guess.

In the DE office of benevolent company J, we had no AC, even though it was company HQ. We had some kind of 'air cooling system', my colleagues explained that it kept the building 6 degrees cooler than the outside temp. Here in Essex we have 'real' AC for a building 1/20th of the size, both in people and perhaps area. It gets turned on most sunny days at this point because the building gets full sun from 10 AM until 6 PM ish if the sun is out. Closer to the US way of thinking perhaps...