Audrey Pulvar, Paris deputy mayor for international relations, did not stay silent. As France recorded more than 1,300 excess deaths since June 21, most of them older adults, with morgues overwhelmed, American tourists and journalists mocked the country on social media for not having air conditioning amid temperatures of 40 degrees Celsius.
Pulvar responded forcefully: “As the world’s second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases, you bear significant responsibility for global warming and for the consequences that we, in France, are experiencing”. And she added bluntly: “Your cities, with 90% artificially air-conditioned, are not unrelated to this”.
What lies behind this dispute goes beyond sarcasm on social media. Only 25% of French households have air conditioning, a historic decision tied to culture, the environment, and building codes. But the current heat wave, which began on June 20, already exceeds in intensity that of 2003, when 15,000 people died in France. Scientists confirm it: without climate change, this level of heat would have been impossible.
