Yes, like Chris said, they do throttle when reaching very high temps. In that regards the Air is not capable of sustained peak performance, which is where maybe in a very demanding game or video transcoding it will lag behind the 13" Pro, be that M1 or M2. After all it's an ARM chip, so the things that apply to phone chips, more or less apply to Apple Silicon too.

The reason for not having active cooling is the target market. It's meant to be light and slim. Add active cooling and you have to either increase the thickness or take some of the battery out. Remember, Intel Airs used to last just 7-10h on a single charge. I think it's a good machine for literally anyone who doesn't want to become the next YouTuber, does a lot of 3D rendering or data crunching.