In recent years, Europe’s late springs and summers have gotten hotter and hotter. The data is brutal, with tens of thousands of Europeans dying from heat-related causes every year. 2024 was one of the worst years for Europe as far as heat and heat-related deaths. Currently, Europe is in the middle of yet another catastrophic heat wave. While countries like Spain and Italy deal with the heat by turning on air conditioning, other countries like France and Germany choose to villainize air conditioning and refuse to change public policy around health and safety. The AP just published a brutal piece about all of the heat-stroke deaths in France in recent weeks, deaths which have overwhelmed French mortuaries. Instead of changing public policy around AC, one French official has decided to… blame America.
A Paris official has said she holds the US partially responsible for the record-breaking heatwave in France. The comments were made as part of a scathing rebuke to American tourists, immigrants and expats who have been criticising France for its lack of air conditioning across the country. Over the past week, the transatlantic discourse online has also been heating up, with some Americans – many living in desert and tropical climes in the southern US – mocking the French and Western Europeans for not being able to withstand temperatures to which they are accustomed to every year.
“Dear American journalists and social media ‘influencers’: for days, some of you have been criticising and making fun of Paris because the city does not have A/C in every room…OMG, this is so rich!” wrote Audrey Pulvar, deputy mayor of Paris for international relations, on social media. “As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities, which are 90 per cent air conditioned, are not unrelated to this.”
After listing Paris’s green initiatives, Ms Pulvar ended her posts by criticising the US for what she described as the country’s disdain for the planet. “So please, enough with the lecture. Just start doing your part. Best regards.”
Unlike the US, where air conditioning is common, in France only one in four households has air conditioning. Historically, the French have been sceptical about air conditioning: an Ipsos survey published earlier this month found that 78 per cent of French people believe that it’s bad for the environment and one in six respondents said they would rather suffer for the sake of the planet.
But last week’s record-breaking temperatures have shown that attitudes have shifted, with retailers across the country selling out of portable air conditioning units and videos capturing shoppers forming long queues and tearing at pallets holding units freshly offloaded from delivery trucks.
Preliminary mortality figures released Sunday by Public Health France show that the country has registered 1,000 more deaths than previous months since the peak of the heatwave on Wednesday, when temperatures edged past the 40C threshold in many parts of France. The number of home deaths also spiked by 40 per cent during that time. But the minister of health also warned that heat-related illnesses can last long after the heatwave has ended, and that the mortality rate could rise.
“One in six respondents said they would rather suffer for the sake of the planet….” Do they realize that they’re not just making that choice for themselves, but for their parents and grandparents? True story: it takes more energy (and it’s more expensive) to heat a home in winter than cool it down with AC in summer. Following this logic, shouldn’t people turn off their heat and “suffer” through frigid, below-freezing temperatures in winter for the environment? Why is hypothermia acknowledged as a bad thing but heat stroke is not? As for Audrey Pulvar… it feels like French officials are unprepared for all of the attention and criticism they’re getting on social media, as the rest of the world is seeing this crisis unfold in real time. It actually warms my heart (or cools my heart, as I have the AC running right now) to see that French people are starting to wake up to reality and they’re now buying air-conditioning units as soon as the units come off the truck. Welcome to the dark side, AC should be a human right!!
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
