Conservatives in France want
ACs but Liberals are for Fans
As heat waves batter Europe, the need (or
not) for air-conditioning has become part of the political tug of war in France
between the right and the left.
How
air-conditioning has turned into a political and cultural flashpoint in France,
especially during a recent summer heat wave.
Key points:
·
Political divide:
o Right-wing view (Marine
Le Pen & allies): Promote widespread A/C deployment as a practical response
to hotter summers.
o Left-wing & Green
view (Marine Tondelier, environmentalists): Favor urban greening,
insulation, and energy efficiency over A/C, which they see as wasteful and a
“maladaptation” that worsens climate change.
·
Media framing:
o Conservative outlets
defend A/C as essential for health, productivity, and comfort.
o Left-leaning outlets
call it an environmental aberration that wastes energy and releases hot air
into cities.
·
Current usage & constraints:
o France: ~20–25% of
households have A/C; Italy ~50%; Spain ~40%.
o EU homes use far more
energy for heating (62.5%) than cooling (<1%).
o Barriers include high
energy costs, dense historic architecture, and bureaucratic hurdles for
installations.
·
Climate trends:
o Europe now faces
hotter, longer summers—e.g., Madrid now averages 63 days/year above 85°F vs. 29
days in the early 1980s.
o More intense heat
spikes are common, with many cities regularly topping 90°F.
·
Middle ground:
o Broad agreement on the
need for A/C in vulnerable settings like hospitals, schools, and retirement
homes.
o Government advice lists
A/C as a last-resort cooling measure, after passive solutions (insulation,
shading, ventilation).
·
Underlying tension:
o Debate isn’t just about
cooling—it’s symbolic of how to adapt to climate change: fix the symptoms (A/C)
or the causes (reduce emissions, redesign cities).
The culture wars have come for air-conditioning,
at least in France.
In July, as a heat wave broiled much of Europe,
feelings about air-conditioning suddenly became a political litmus test.
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.
While France’s heated discussion of air-conditioning
cooled along with the temperatures in the weeks that followed, increasingly hot
summers in Europe mean that the issue is not going anywhere.
Decades ago, bickering over air-conditioning
might have seemed strange in Europe, where there was historically little need for
it and where keeping homes warm is still a top concern.
But times are changing fast.
An analysis of daily temperature data from
Copernicus, part of the European Union’s space program, shows that much of Europe
is now experiencing longer periods of severe heat than it was just 40 years ago.
So while many derided air-conditioning for years as an
unnecessary — and awfully American — amenity, it is now increasingly seen as a necessity
to survive scorching summers.
Despite rising temperatures, only about half
of homes in Italy today have air-conditioning, according to Italy’s national statistics
institute. In Spain, real estate data indicates the share is roughly 40 percent.
And in France, only an estimated 20 to 25 percent of households are equipped with
air-conditioning, according to the country’s Agency for Ecological Transition. In
2023, 62.5 percent of energy consumed by households in the European Union was used
to heat homes, versus less than 1 percent to cool them, according to E.U. statistics.
Energy costs are also usually higher in Europe
than in the United States — where almost 90 percent of homes use some form of air-conditioning.
The dense architecture of European cities is ill suited to ungainly air-conditioning
units, and in places like Paris, securing the necessary approvals for old or historical
apartment buildings can be complex.
“Air-conditioning still scares some — many
still have in mind countries like the United States, where homes and shops are extremely
conditioned,” said Baudouin de la Varende, the co-founder
of Ithaque, a French consulting firm that helps households
with energy-efficient renovations. But even he said that weatherproofing would help
only so much in the coming decades.
“I’m a little saddened that the debate is
often boiled down to for or against air-conditioning,” he added. “Most people are
in the middle: Air-conditioning is a useful tool.”
Some of the debate is political posturing.
Look beyond the sniping on social media, and there is broad agreement in France
that air-conditioning is necessary in spaces like retirement homes, hospitals and
schools. More than 1,800 schools had to close during the worst of last month’s heat
wave. Few people are clamoring for a cooling unit in every
home.
“Air-conditioning
is not black or white,” Agnès Pannier-Runacher, France’s
environment minister, recently told
reporters.
“We need air-conditioning to give vulnerable people some respite. But we mustn’t
do it everywhere.”
Despite her modulated tones, the public debate
has focused on what air-conditioning represents. Those who see it as an evil, mainly
on the left, say it is another example of leaders’ addressing the symptoms of climate
change rather than dealing with its underlying causes.
They argue that it is an energy-hungry technology
that must be deployed sparingly for those who really need it, while society puts
in place solutions that do not exacerbate global warming.
“Air-conditioning is what you’d call a maladaptation,”
said Dan Lert, the deputy mayor in charge of green transition policies in Paris.
“To fix a real problem, you make it worse.”
But to its supporters, mainly on the right,
air-conditioning is unfairly vilified by environmentalists. They note that France
relies primarily on carbon-neutral nuclear energy to provide electricity used for
cooling, and air-conditioning units leak less polluting refrigerating gases than
they used to.
“There is no reason to cling to ideological
dogmatism and oppose concrete solutions,” a group of conservative lawmakers allied
with Ms. Le Pen wrote in a bill proposed last month that would make it mandatory
to air-condition certain public spaces.
And fans of air-conditioning argue that solutions
like sun-blocking shutters will get you only so far in the years to come.
Much of southern Europe now experiences more
than two months each year when daily high temperatures exceed 85 degrees. Madrid,
Spain’s capital, has had an average of 63 days above 85 degrees in recent years,
up from 29 days per year in the early 1980s.
In many places, the heat is not just longer-lasting
but also more intense. Forty years ago, temperatures in Madrid rarely climbed above
90 degrees, but in the past five years, a typical summer has included 40 days above
90 degrees.
Whether cultural resistance to air-conditioning
in France will persist in such conditions remains to be seen.
Perhaps no one displays that ambivalence
better than Christian Meyer, the head of a company near Strasbourg that installs
air-conditioning units. Despite having a vested interest in promoting air-conditioning,
he was recently quoted in a local newspaper saying that he wasn’t a fan and that
he didn’t use it himself. (“The best air-conditioning is a well-insulated house,”
he is quoted as saying.)
For now, as the arguments continue, the government’s
official heat-related advice takes a middle road, of sorts. Air-conditioning is
on its list of options to keep a home cool. But the guidelines warn that it is “a
solution that should be considered only after all other options have been exhausted.”