The differences between a refrigerator and and air conditioner are basically cosmetic and placement
No, the difference between a refrigerator and and air conditioner is two orders of magnitude in energy use. An AC tends to use more power than the rest of the house combined.
Thirty years ago, in the area where I live (.nl) there was basically no need for air conditioning: temperatures high enough that you can't function without AC were a once-a-decade occurrence, so installing it was seen as wasteful.
Today, there still is resistance to installing AC units, with the argument that they exacerbate the problem, both by making the outdoors hotter and by using lots of power which increases CO2 emissions. But debilitating temperatures are becoming commonplace, so we increasingly have no alternative to installing AC.