I continue to be fascinated by the fact that Europeans stubbornly refuse to embrace air conditioning even as they suffer through a heat wave that is literally killing people.
Roughly 1,000 excess deaths were reported in France between Wednesday and Saturday as temperatures in the country rose to their highest recorded levels, according to Santé Publique France, the national public health agency.
Excess deaths were particularly high in the west and center of the country, according to the agency, which compared the average daily death toll with that of the previous two months. Eighty-five percent of the dead were aged 65 or older, though increases were seen across all age groups, the agency said in a statement on Sunday.
The heat wave has turned the obvious solution for this problem, air conditioning, into a political football in Europe. It's now becoming right-coded to support AC and left-coded to oppose it.
It was a crisp 54 degrees in Aberdeen, on the northeast coast of Scotland, last week when Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, once again championed the country’s fossil fuel industry...
Eight days later, thermostats across southern England and Wales recorded soaring heat, with temperatures in London nearing 100 degrees. Schools closed, trains were canceled or delayed and some hospitals halted elective procedures. The opening session of London Climate Action Week, focused on improving extreme heat governance, was called off after Britain’s national weather service, the Met Office, issued a “red warning.”...
Everyone agrees something must be done. But not everyone agrees on what that should be.
Increasingly, the answer from right-wing politicians is to focus on a short-term fix that almost everyone agrees is necessary — the installation of air-conditioning units in European homes, schools, public buildings and hospitals.
Beege just wrote about some of the same battle happening in Germany. And in France it's also become a partisan issue.
Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader in France, declared that she would deploy a “major air-conditioning equipment plan” around the country if her nationalist party eventually came to power. Marine Tondelier, the head of France’s Green party, scoffed at Ms. Le Pen’s idea and, instead, suggested solutions to warming temperatures that included “greening” cities and making buildings more energy efficient.
An opinion essay in Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, defended air-conditioning because “making our fellow citizens sweat limits learning, reduces working hours and clogs up hospitals.” Libération, a left-wing daily, countered such arguments, writing that the technology was “an environmental aberration that must be overcome” because it blows hot air onto streets and guzzles up precious energy.
“Is air-conditioning a far-right thing?” one talk show asked provocatively, reflecting how divisive the issue had become.
In Belgium the same divide seems to be happening:
In the Belgian city of Ghent, which is run mostly by left-of-center politicians, the municipal website this week discouraged citizens from using air-conditioners, saying that “the best air-conditioner is a tree” and advising they use fans and request a free tree to plant outside their houses.
Maurits Vande Reyde, a right-wing member of the Flemish Parliament, responded to Ghent’s recommendations on social media.
“It is absurd that all governments in our country, under pressure from left-green mumbo-jumbo, advise against the use of air-conditioning,” he wrote on Tuesday. “The most efficient and best solution. How many deaths would the government already have on its conscience with this kind of absurd advice?”
All of this is happening at the same time a bunch of Europeans are here in the U.S. for the World Cup and also happen to be experiencing air conditioning in a way they are not used to.
The British food vlogger tried barbecue in Dallas, bagels in New York and cheesesteaks in Philadelphia, but when he returned to England from his World Cup trip, another American specialty dominated his thoughts.
“Absolute bliss,” he recalled. “The best thing in the world.”
That would be air conditioning.
Jono Yates, 39, fixated on the 62-degree comfort of his Hilton hotel suites like a man tormented by forbidden love. They probably weren’t meant to be — the YouTuber and the cool blast.
And there are at least three recent articles by people who live in America who happened to be in Europe during the heat wave and did not enjoy it. This story for Reason explains it's not just concern about climate change that makes installing AC nearly impossible in Europe.
It's not just tree huggers working to keep houses hot. NIMBY ("not in my back yard") attitudes have also made it harder for homeowners to install climate-control equipment. The main barriers to air conditioning in many European countries are historical preservation laws, noise regulations, and other aesthetic rules, according to the Consumer Choice Center. Local planning councils in Britain are infamous for rejecting AC installations on these three grounds. Condensers sticking out windows, they argue, could ruin the character of a neighborhood.
Portofino, the richest town in Italy, suffered a police crackdown on illegal air conditioning in 2024, after its mayor caught an AC unit hanging over an alleyway. ("Portofino is located in a regional park and there are rules that need to be respected," the mayor told The Guardian.) The Italian press described a "vendetta" between Portofino residents, who tried to settle personal scores by reporting each others' air conditioning to the authorities, even secretly photographing each others' homes during social gatherings.
That incident points to the final barrier to air conditioning in Europe: sheer snobbishness. "If we jump straight into an air conditioning country, it's a shame," the founder of Shade the UK, a nonprofit that helps heatproof buildings, told Bloomberg. The TV show Good Morning Britain ran a debate on whether it is "selfish" to use air conditioning. French media has run downright false stories warning viewers that air conditioning will make them sick. The German magazine WELT has described an "AC-phobia" that comes from a guilt complex around climate change.
At base, it seems Europeans just don't want to admit that they were wrong or, more to the point, that they are wrong right now and that their refusal to admit it will be deadly for a lot of older people and make life miserable for everyone else. As is often the case, they really need to listen to the common sense coming from people on the right and stop being arrogant snobs. But that's always hard to do when being a leftist is your whole identity.
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