America is to blame for the heatwave that has caused so much misery in France in the last fortnight. Audrey Pulvar, the Socialist deputy mayor of Paris, took to social media at the weekend, addressing a letter to “dear American journalists” who have been making fun of Paris because the city doesn’t have air conditioning. “This is so rich!” exclaimed Pulvar. “You bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming and the consequences we, in France, are experiencing. Your cities, which are 90 percent air conditioned, are not unrelated to this.”
It sounds like Madame Pulvar is a little hot and bothered, which isn’t surprising given the furnace that France has become. In Chablis, a little south of where I live in Burgundy, the temperature hit 41.6°C (107°F) on Saturday, a regional record for June. The vines, according to one wine-grower, are “starting to show signs of stress.”
“Installing air conditioning everywhere just means making the damage worse,” declared Jean-Luc Mélenchon
It is not just the vines which are distressed. Across France, from the Cote d’Azur in the south to the Côte d’Opale in the north, the Republic has been roasting for two weeks and the people are suffering.
The heatwave officially ended on Sunday – the thermometer in my garden has dropped from 104°F to 82°F – but France’s meteorologists are warning it could return on July 6.
On Sunday, France’s Public Health agency announced that approximately 1,000 more deaths than expected occurred during the heatwave (an estimate it admitted was conservative) and more than 85 percent were people aged 65 and over. The agency said that this figures a reminder of “the need for measures of solidarity toward people who are isolated or experiencing profound loneliness.”
They are also a reminder of how woefully unprepared France remains to deal with extreme heat.
In August 2003, a 16-day heatwave swept across France, causing more than 15,000 deaths. Patrick Pelloux, the president of the French Association of Hospital Emergency Physicians at the time, said that the most vulnerable “are dropping like flies” and he criticized the health authorities for “failing to grasp the seriousness of what is happening.”
The same criticisms are being heard again. How can it be that nearly a quarter of a century later France is still incapable of protecting its people in a heatwave?
This is particularly true in hospitals, where thousands of patients have broiled in wards without air-conditioning.
In one Parisian hospital – typical of many across the country – only three of the 30 wards have air-conditioning. The temperature in those wards soared to 95°F last week. Hospital staff did their best to reduce the stifling heat, draping emergency blankets over windows and installing fans, but they also advised patients to bring their own fans if possible.
The heatwave has also had a terrible effect in schools, none of which are air-conditioned. My wife is a high school teacher and the past fortnight has been an ordeal for staff and pupils. At least in her school they weren’t forced to sit exams in an underground car park to escape the heat, as was the case at one school in Versailles. More than 1,300 schools closed in France last week because the heat was insupportable.
Air conditioning is the exception and not the rule in France. Approximately 25 percent of homes are air-conditioned, half that of households in Italy and Spain.
The problem in France is ideology. The political, cultural and media elite is dominated by the left and a central tenet of their dogma is the belief that air-conditioning is bad for the environment.
“Installing air conditioning everywhere just means making the damage worse,” declared Jean-Luc Mélenchon, leader of the far-left la France Insoumise. “You mustn’t do that under any circumstances.”
This view was echoed by Monique Barbut, the Minister of Ecological Transition in Emmanuel Macron’s center-left government. She said she was “horrified” by those calling for air conditioning in public buildings. “And do you think that’s going to prevent a forest fire?” she snapped. “Do you think that’s going to prevent a crop from being destroyed?… You think it will prevent what? Nothing. Nothing.”
It was an extraordinary outburst, one which totally missed the point but did reveal the extent of the zealotry prevalent within the French left.
This fanaticism has been exploited in recent days by Marine Le Pen and her right-wing National Rally party. She has pledged to implement “a massive air conditioning plan” if they win power in next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. She rubbished the left’s assertion that air-conditioning is bad for the planet, accusing them of drawing on dodgy data. “Modern air conditioners remove hot air and do not release gases or heat into the atmosphere,” she said.
Le Pen’s economic spokesman, Jean-Philippe Tanguy, said the “plan clim” [air conditioning in France is “climatisation“] would also include government-backed interest-free loans worth €20bn ($22.7bn) in order that 30 to 40 million householders could install air conditioning units.
It should also be extended to businesses because a report at the weekend laid bare the economic damage caused to French industry by the heatwave; many offices and factories closed temporarily last week and workers also called in sick because they were unable to sleep at night.
If heatwaves become an annual occurrence in Europe, the report stated, the cumulative implied GDP losses for 2026-2030 could reach $147 billion for Italy, $131 billion for Germany, $120 billion for Spain, and $240 billion for France.
The Socialist Party responded to the National Rally’s air-con plan with ridicule, describing it as “clownish.”
Perhaps the real clowns are in the anti-air conditioning movement, although there’s nothing funny about allowing hospital patients to swelter and suffer.
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