Yeah, you can — in essence — thank the governments of the U.S. and various European countries for coming up with such stringent fuel economy standards, so as to force automakers to use techniques such as auto stop-start.
To circumvent the A/C issue you describe, shifting into neutral works well, as does shifting into manual mode (using the toggles at the top of the shifter). Another option is (theoretically) changing the A/C fan speed to a different setting when the engine stop kicks in, and it should return to the appropriate fan speed… though I haven’t confirmed that this works yet.
