Is this an American thing? There seem to be a number of comments akin to "you'll prise it from my cold dead fingers" when that isn't being suggested.
We are also (rightly) suspicious of people attempting to remove or restrict some personally favored appliance or tool. Often the early stages of this process appear as social media influence campaigns about how the thing in question is unnecessary or harmful. (I don’t think AC is at risk of being restricted here, but I can see why others might be overly protective.)
Many northern areas of the US still have buildings without AC, mostly older buildings.
Can you name one? That isn't the same argument as against all needless waste?
What I'm seeing is we can't even talk about shutter designs without talking about AC instead. Using AC may not harm society, but some people knowing about it kinda does.
Never mind that these same people would go absolutely out of their minds if you suggested tearing down and remodeling most cities, which are basically radiators at night since there's concrete everywhere.
So instead of trying to somehow mitigate the issue of "AC heating the outside air", by, for example, installing the outside units on top of the buildings, so most heat wouldn't be at street level where people walk around, many people who can't breathe in their apartments just use portable ACs which dump the heat right outside their windows. Bonus points for these being very unefficient, so now electricity consumption is even higher.
In the specific case of France, they also tend to forget that most of our electricity is essentially carbon-free.
Which is not great because it's wasteful, so you're making the same "moralistic argument". Unless your point is just that it's hypocritical, of course.
Part of the moralistic argument against planned AC rollout is electricity consumption. But not doing it is actually generating more consumption in practice.