As temperatures blew past 100°F in cities across Europe last week, it was difficult to tell what was generating more hot air: the weather or the discourse around the right way to endure it.
Why air conditioning became a cross-Atlantic culture war
Air conditioning is not a moral failure.
Bryan Walsh is a senior editorial director at Vox overseeing the Future Perfect and climate teams and writes the Good News newsletter. He worked at Time magazine for 15 years as a foreign correspondent in Asia, a climate writer, and an international editor, and he wrote a book on existential risk.
On the western side of the Atlantic, the answer was almost uniformly obvious: air conditioning. Just around 20 percent of European households have air conditioning, compared to 90 percent in the US. Even public buildings — including vital ones like schools and hospitals — often go without air conditioning in Europe. Not because they can’t afford them, primarily, but because, for some reason, many people there think there’s something inherently wrong with what the French call “climatisation.”
The very idea of air conditioning, to many Europeans, is an example of maladaptation, “a false solution that makes the problem worse” — in the words of far-left French politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon. Better to adapt for those very hot days by closing the shutters and blinds during the day, staying in the shade, drinking plenty of water, and maybe planting a tree.
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