alt Hacker NewsThe warming is terrible and deadly, AND ALSO Europeans are negligent in not protecting themselves however they can.
The idea that Europe could slow warming by not using air-conditioning is absurd, when the emissions mostly come from elsewhere. France, in particular, gets most of its energy from nuclear power, but also makes it very hard to get climatisation.
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When I lived in a rather hot area of Spain for a year, I was shocked to find out that many apartments don't have an air conditioner. In a place where a similar heat wave happens every year, for months. A friend of mine moved there from Germany and being somewhat frugal, rented a place without and aircon. Let me just say that he didn't enjoy the summer nights one bit.
I myself had one, but I could probably rent a car for the cost of running it.
I will say this - air conditioning costs to establish room temperature are inversely proportional to the degree the building is insulated. If your whole country is comprised of uninsulated or barely insulated housing stock, you have a MUCH larger project than simply buying some small window units for a few hundred euro per person and then paying a few hundred euros extra per year in energy costs.
If you can't run one fifth of your nuclear plants, because the water levels are to low or the water temperatures too high in the rivers used to cool them, you may want to reconsider whether that is truly the best choice here¹
In the meantime my fathers solar roof allows him free AC cooling, because as it turns out AC generally needs most energy when the sun shines the most.
I am not arguing nuclear plants do not have benefits, I just argue that solar with storage may be a much better fit for powering ACs.
¹: https://www.euronews.com/2026/08/12/heatwave-and-jellyfish-a...
>Europeans are negligent in not protecting themselves however they can.
Well, if the people in charge say or think global warming isn't real, that's what you get: not "other" solutions to the "unacceptable propositions" the Green parties suggest, but no proposition at all, as there is no problem.
The current situation is a direct consequence of pure negationism from conservative parties, not a disagreement on how to deal with climate change between the Right and the Left. The Left proposed solutions you may not agree with, but the Right has been completely rejecting the reality of climate change.
BTW, how do you propose Europe protect not only people from the heat, but also forests from burning, rivers from drying up, fields from being unfit for cows and sheep, lakes from blooming with algae, nuclear plants from being shut down due to river water being too hot and seawater being full of jellyfish, etc, etc, etc? In the end, there are so many things to "adapt" that it would cost less to try to organize a global effort to lower CO2.
People live longer in many parts of Europe than the USA. Does that mean the USA is somehow negligent?
Excess deaths due to heat are primarily the in the elderly. The excess numbers we are seeing now are because the proportion of elderly people in France, Germany and Spain are higher than in the USA.
If the population pyramid in the EU was more similar to that of the USA the number of excess deaths would be lower. I'm not sure negligent is the correct word to use. Climate change will reduce quality of life. Because of these changes people will not live as long.
That's how excess deaths work.