19 ms·

Summer heat killed nearly 1,500 in France, officials say

132 points by elorant 7y ago

aaron695 7y ago
Last week people on HN didn't like air-conditioners. Could we get a coherent thought process going, or is it just jump on the latest dopamine buzz. Either they are everywhere in society and incidents like this are reduced. Or old people die. I'm 100% for better efficiency in buildings, as is everyone, but this is not what the anti-air-conditioner league want. They want buildings designed to work without them, a different idea, you can't just kick an air-conditioner on when you hit the 1 in a 1000 hot days. PS The cold kills more people, but outside of deaths from hypothermia (a small %) it's not talked about as much.
lprd 7y ago
As an American expat that has been living in Paris for the last 7 years, France could really use some AC upgrades. I couldn't survive the summers without mine.
- joshuaheard 7y ago
  When I lived there, I was surprised nearly none of the buildings had AC. I guess because the buildings are so old, and it is only very hot for a short time every year when most people are away on vacation, and, because it's France.
tlb 7y ago
There's a big penumbra of people who were sort-of killed by heat. For example, I was biking through Europe this August during the heat wave, and one of our group suffered a heart attack. He'll recover, but the paramedics told us that they'd responded to two fatal motorcycle accidents that day, probably caused by the riders getting heatstroke and losing control. When you include cases like that, and you should if you're trying to figure out how important it is to avoid global heating, the death toll goes way up.
- dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  While I agree that extreme temperatures certainly contribute to the death of people who would not have otherwise died I don't think it's that cut and clear. In many cases of heat death there is shared responsibility. To lump them all together as heat deaths is sensationalist. If it's 100deg out then you shouldn't be doing things that require massive amounts of PPE. If someone dies because they were improperly clothed for the cold we wouldn't allocate all the blame the cold. If someone decides to swim in 8ft surf we wouldn't allocate all the blame to the wind. Obviously there's specific situations where the ambient temperature is more to blame than not (elderly people without air conditioning being the example that comes to mind) but you can't just lump every death that could have possibly been prevented if it were cooler in as a heat death though. Sure some of them are more heat than personal responsibility but a non-negligible amount of them are more personal responsibility than heat. People need to start thinking about heat the way they think about other severe weather (people in tropical countries already do this) because at this point the climate is going to change a substantial amount whether we like it or not. If there's gonna be a hurricane you cancel your outdoor activity unless you're fine with the risk. The same applies to a heat wave. I know that this comment combines two things a large subset of people here generally hate but it's my opinion and I stand by it.
  - tlb 7y ago
    I grew up in the Canadian prairies where people frequently did die from the cold. If your car broke down on a lonely road in midwinter, there was a real prospect of freezing to death. People there carried extra parkas, blankets, and thermal candles, but those could only keep you warm for several hours. If you freeze to death in -10C weather, you were improperly clothed. But if you freeze in -50C weather, there's no amount of clothing in which you can both move around and stay warm for a long time. Here's a short story by Jack London with a realistic portrayal of that kind of cold: https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to-build-a-fire.pdf https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to.... It gave me nightmares when I read it in grade school. Nobody blamed the cold, because cold isn't a moral agent. But if you ask people living in the North "how bad would it be if winters got 5 degrees colder?", they would certainly expect more deaths.
egdod 7y ago
> Why is it so hot and is climate change to blame? No. No more than a cold day in winter means that climate change isn’t real.
- adrianN 7y ago
  The frequency of unusually hot days is going up dramatically because of climate change.
  - egdod 7y ago
    [citation needed]
    - adrianN 7y ago
      Literally 30s of googling: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/ https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/
    - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
      “So you know, a warming of 1 degree Celsius, which is what we’ve seen thus far, can lead to a 10-fold increase in the frequency of 100 degree days in New York City for example,” said Dr. Mann. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, since the 1960s the average number of heat waves — defined as two or more consecutive days where daily lows exceeded historical July and August temperatures — in 50 major American cities has tripled. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/climate/heatwave-climate-change.html?auth=login-email&login=email https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/climate/heatwave-climate-...
      - justsubmit 7y ago
        You pasted a quote of Michael Mann, aka the hockey stick guy, a known scientific fraud. Doing things like that is why people don't believe alarmists and the NYT anymore.
        7y ago
HenryBemis 7y ago
> half of those who died were aged over 75 France/Paris has a deeper problem that comes out in these heatwaves. Older people that live alone, with little or no relatives caring for them, and living in flats without air-conditioning, or have low income/pension that they cannot afford an extended heatwave, happen to pass every summer there is a heatwave in Central Europe (which lately is more frequent). I remember hearing/reading about this every couple of years about France, and apparently not much is being done to make this stop.
- yardie 7y ago
  Every year for 10 years, for 1 day, I would work for free and donate my salary to the French state. They had set up a fund to purchase and install air conditioning into the homes of the elderly due to the 2003 heatwave that affected 15,000. And that is literally all I know. The money I earned goes somewhere to do something, supposedly. I'm really starting to feel like I've been defrauded because I also feel not a whole lot has been done.
  - esnard 7y ago
    Here's the English Wikipedia page related to that workday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journ%C3%A9e_de_solidarit%C3%A9_envers_les_personnes_%C3%A2g%C3%A9es https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journ%C3%A9e_de_solidarit%C3%A... The money is paid to the CNSA, which has a 26.812 billion euros budget for 2019, according to https://www.cnsa.fr/budget-et-financement/budget#le-budget-2019 https://www.cnsa.fr/budget-et-financement/budget#le-budget-2...
  - ptah 7y ago
    it reduced the death toll by 90%, possibly more if you take into account population growth
  - thecleaner 7y ago
    I believe that this is a noble sentiment. But the bigger issue here is shouldnt just not stealing money on taxes be enough ? I cannot fathom why a lot of people have to act like heroes to get things done. EU in general doesnt seem to have a corruption problem or a moeny problem and yet the infrastructure feels lacking.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
cf141q5325 7y ago
For comparison last winter 13,000 died of influenza in France https://www.connexionfrance.com/Practical/Health/Flu-killed-13-000-this-winter https://www.connexionfrance.com/Practical/Health/Flu-killed-...
investologia 7y ago
France is rich country and AC might be considered in people from certain age It's not the first heat wave and from the speed the global warning is heading, we might see many more heat waves in the near future
- Khanhanhan 7y ago
  AC is one of the biggest global warming offenders and its use should be limited to certain spaces where people in need - including elderly people - could find shelter.
- algaeontoast 7y ago
  Why worry when according to alarmist politicians in the U.S. we only have “12 years left”. I find these claims, and those similar from “activists” like Greta Thunberg, wholly unproductive both to steps taken to actually curb climate change and legitimate science. Society isn’t going to cease growing and moving forward just because of climate change. It is unfortunately a reality that must be dealt with by creation and not regression. Even as someone who supports the idea that climate change is a very real challenge for humanity.
  - onion2k 7y ago
    Society isn’t going to cease growing and moving forward just because of climate change. I don't think that's really what anyone is suggesting, but if the change impacts enough people society as a whole will focus on fixing the problem rather than doing other things.
    - zdragnar 7y ago
      > I don't think that's really what anyone is suggesting The sibling comment to yours suggesting exactly that wasn't the first, not by a long shot. US politicians have suggested everything from ending entire industries to massive increases in abortion to stop population growth. Others have suggested massive taxes to pay for health insurance and UBI so that people who don't feel like working don't have to. "Stop moving forward" might not a common phrase, but only because their version of "forward" is fundamentally different from the current one. Stopping growth is certainly a goal of many far-left thinkers out there.
lprd 7y ago
Not nearly as much as the 2003 heat wave; which took almost fifteen thousand lives in France alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
- rjsw 7y ago
  The 2006 heatwave was as bad as 2003 but people were better prepared so not as many died.
paulsutter 7y ago
France population is 67 million and life expectancy is 82 years, so about 2000 people die every day. Over the 20 days of high heat, that’s about 70 extra people per day, or about 3 percent, just to put it in perspective. What percent of ordinary deaths would we expect to get attributed to high heat? Especially among the elderly? Disappointed in the 0% effort journalists make to put things in perspective.
- skohan 7y ago
  I would consider a 3% increase in mortality rate to be quite alarming.
  - paulsutter 7y ago
    No information is provided whether the rate changed, only that the deaths were attributed to heat. This is the sort of homework I would expect of the journalist EDIT: regarding CNN, 9% doesn’t add up and the quote is vague. I know I’m crazy to expect journalists to care about numbers but it just bugs me
    - Steven_Vellon 7y ago
      CNN's reporting was better: https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/08/europe/france-heat-wave-deaths-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/08/europe/france-heat-wave-death... They report that the mortality rate was 9% higher than baseline during the heat wave.
      - ousta 7y ago
        what about mortality rate after? probably lower than baseline as well
papito 7y ago
Europe needs to get into the culture of air conditioning, cooling centers, and LARGE iced drinks.
zadkey 7y ago
I live in Texas. The heat wave that France is experienced this summer is like maybe 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than a normal summer for us. Preparedness for summer is deeply ingrained in everyone's minds here. Many Apartment complexes treat issues with AC units as emergency situations, reach out to on-call handymen and give high priority to their fix. In the city of Dallas, city code requires that property owners provide refrigerated air to tenants from April 1 to Nov. 1. "According to state law, landlords must fix any condition that threatens a tenant's health or safety. In Texas, that condition can include a sweltering day in a stuffy apartment with no air conditioning." It is my hope that people in France look for ways to prepare and better safeguard the health and well-being of their citizens against the heat. Some information taken from https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2009/10/07/dmn-problem-solver-renters-have-options-when-the-air-conditioner-doesn-t-get-fixed/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2009/10/07/dm...
- negrit 7y ago
  In France it's very very uncommon to have AC.
  - cf498 7y ago
    Its not just France, its an issue across northern/western Europe. Combine that with the difficulty of getting a proper AC installed in a rented house/apartment with normal stone walls and it explains the current lack of AC units. Most landlord will immediately be scared for the buildings substance. The few AC units that you see are those "mobile" devices with a single tube hanging out of a window. Even window units are a rare occasion because of the kind of windows installed across the country. Not to mention regulations stopping renters from changing the outer appearance of the house. I really dont see a viable plan to retrofit living spaces in a reasonable time frame. At this point i would even be doubtful, that there would be enough people capable of doing the job available. An often overlooked point is also the situation in workplaces, some parts of Europe simply lack the worker protection needed during heatwaves. I honestly dont see how most countries in Europe could retrofit buildings to a detectable degree, let alone finance it. There are just to many older buildings build for another kind of climate. Providing air conditioned shelters during the weeks of deadly heat sounds like the most realistic option. That would be similar to what is being done in winter to prevent people from freezing to death.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
trothamel 7y ago
Note that according to https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.h... , which describes a study in The Lancet, "cold weather kills more than 20 times as many people as hot weather". So it kind of makes you wonder if this is something like the trolley problem - if raising the temperature sacrifices 1,500 lives to save 30,000, is it worth it?
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  If global warming continues on a worst-case trajectory, then large swathes of equatorial land may be uninhabitable to humans in 50 or 100 years. More than a billion people will be forced to migrate or die. If it comes to that, the death toll will be much worse than a few bad winters.
noonespecial 7y ago
I'd just like to take a moment (in light of some of the comments here) to say that air-conditioning is neither a moral failure nor an ecological disaster. An incentive to replace aging gas and electric heat with high efficiency modern heat-pumps that can both heat and cool is a clear ecological win. The question is (as ever) how can we fairly deploy this society changing tech so that those who need it most don't get it last.
mpalczewski 7y ago
That's certainly many people, and it sucks if someone you know died because of the head. However, I can't tell for a population like France if this is a large number. Would love to see something like, how many people die from cold in France each year, or other environmental effects.
- cryptoz 7y ago
  > However, I can't tell for a population like France if this is a large number. Sure you can. The number should be 0 for any country regardless of size, and 1500 is a huge number compared to 0. There's no reason in our modern society, with our ability to build iPhones and measure the weather with satellites, that a single person should die from a heat wave.
  - mpalczewski 7y ago
    No I can't. That was unconvincing to me. It makes sense to me that in France a society (which by the way doesn't make iPhones, not sure how that applies here anyway) that has some sort of strange hang up about air conditioning would have people die of heat.
Scoundreller 7y ago
This is a vast improvement over previous heat waves where 15k died in 2003 France. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave At least it’s taken seriously rather than “it doesn’t get hot here and it will pass”.
Scoundreller 7y ago
My experience with a lot of French people isn’t just “we don’t need air conditioning”. It’s that “air conditioning makes you sick”. Even though most EU cars now come standard with AC, my experience is that the French would rather open the windows on the autoroute than turn hit the AC.
wtdata 7y ago
We need to stop with this ancient idea that AC is problematic against the environment. There are quite a few uninformed comments on this thread. Just by using their AC also in the winter to heat their houses instead of traditional heating systems, these people are already having a lower CO2 footprint (even when using the AC to cool down a few weeks in the year) than people that don't use an AC. Modern AC systems work with in inverter heat pump and are extremely efficient at cooling down and heating up a house since all they do is to move heat from one place to the other. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning
PauloManrique 7y ago
Funny thing is, the record high temperatures on France were LOWER than regular temperatures in several cities in Brazil.

132 points by elorant 7y ago

Last week people on HN didn't like air-conditioners. Could we get a coherent thought process going, or is it just jump on the latest dopamine buzz. Either they are everywhere in society and incidents like this are reduced. Or old people die. I'm 100% for better efficiency in buildings, as is everyone, but this is not what the anti-air-conditioner league want. They want buildings designed to work without them, a different idea, you can't just kick an air-conditioner on when you hit the 1 in a 1000 hot days. PS The cold kills more people, but outside of deaths from hypothermia (a small %) it's not talked about as much.

lprd 7y ago

As an American expat that has been living in Paris for the last 7 years, France could really use some AC upgrades. I couldn't survive the summers without mine.

joshuaheard 7y ago
When I lived there, I was surprised nearly none of the buildings had AC. I guess because the buildings are so old, and it is only very hot for a short time every year when most people are away on vacation, and, because it's France.

tlb 7y ago

There's a big penumbra of people who were sort-of killed by heat. For example, I was biking through Europe this August during the heat wave, and one of our group suffered a heart attack. He'll recover, but the paramedics told us that they'd responded to two fatal motorcycle accidents that day, probably caused by the riders getting heatstroke and losing control. When you include cases like that, and you should if you're trying to figure out how important it is to avoid global heating, the death toll goes way up.

dsfyu404ed 7y ago
While I agree that extreme temperatures certainly contribute to the death of people who would not have otherwise died I don't think it's that cut and clear. In many cases of heat death there is shared responsibility. To lump them all together as heat deaths is sensationalist. If it's 100deg out then you shouldn't be doing things that require massive amounts of PPE. If someone dies because they were improperly clothed for the cold we wouldn't allocate all the blame the cold. If someone decides to swim in 8ft surf we wouldn't allocate all the blame to the wind. Obviously there's specific situations where the ambient temperature is more to blame than not (elderly people without air conditioning being the example that comes to mind) but you can't just lump every death that could have possibly been prevented if it were cooler in as a heat death though. Sure some of them are more heat than personal responsibility but a non-negligible amount of them are more personal responsibility than heat. People need to start thinking about heat the way they think about other severe weather (people in tropical countries already do this) because at this point the climate is going to change a substantial amount whether we like it or not. If there's gonna be a hurricane you cancel your outdoor activity unless you're fine with the risk. The same applies to a heat wave. I know that this comment combines two things a large subset of people here generally hate but it's my opinion and I stand by it.
- tlb 7y ago
  I grew up in the Canadian prairies where people frequently did die from the cold. If your car broke down on a lonely road in midwinter, there was a real prospect of freezing to death. People there carried extra parkas, blankets, and thermal candles, but those could only keep you warm for several hours. If you freeze to death in -10C weather, you were improperly clothed. But if you freeze in -50C weather, there's no amount of clothing in which you can both move around and stay warm for a long time. Here's a short story by Jack London with a realistic portrayal of that kind of cold: https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to-build-a-fire.pdf https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/to.... It gave me nightmares when I read it in grade school. Nobody blamed the cold, because cold isn't a moral agent. But if you ask people living in the North "how bad would it be if winters got 5 degrees colder?", they would certainly expect more deaths.

egdod 7y ago

> Why is it so hot and is climate change to blame? No. No more than a cold day in winter means that climate change isn’t real.

adrianN 7y ago
The frequency of unusually hot days is going up dramatically because of climate change.
- egdod 7y ago
  [citation needed]
  - adrianN 7y ago
    Literally 30s of googling: https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/ https://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/briefs/hansen_17/
  - aaronbrethorst 7y ago
    “So you know, a warming of 1 degree Celsius, which is what we’ve seen thus far, can lead to a 10-fold increase in the frequency of 100 degree days in New York City for example,” said Dr. Mann. According to the U.S. Global Change Research Program, since the 1960s the average number of heat waves — defined as two or more consecutive days where daily lows exceeded historical July and August temperatures — in 50 major American cities has tripled. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/climate/heatwave-climate-change.html?auth=login-email&login=email https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/18/climate/heatwave-climate-...
    - justsubmit 7y ago
      You pasted a quote of Michael Mann, aka the hockey stick guy, a known scientific fraud. Doing things like that is why people don't believe alarmists and the NYT anymore.
      - 7y ago

HenryBemis 7y ago

> half of those who died were aged over 75 France/Paris has a deeper problem that comes out in these heatwaves. Older people that live alone, with little or no relatives caring for them, and living in flats without air-conditioning, or have low income/pension that they cannot afford an extended heatwave, happen to pass every summer there is a heatwave in Central Europe (which lately is more frequent). I remember hearing/reading about this every couple of years about France, and apparently not much is being done to make this stop.

yardie 7y ago
Every year for 10 years, for 1 day, I would work for free and donate my salary to the French state. They had set up a fund to purchase and install air conditioning into the homes of the elderly due to the 2003 heatwave that affected 15,000. And that is literally all I know. The money I earned goes somewhere to do something, supposedly. I'm really starting to feel like I've been defrauded because I also feel not a whole lot has been done.
- esnard 7y ago
  Here's the English Wikipedia page related to that workday: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journ%C3%A9e_de_solidarit%C3%A9_envers_les_personnes_%C3%A2g%C3%A9es https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Journ%C3%A9e_de_solidarit%C3%A... The money is paid to the CNSA, which has a 26.812 billion euros budget for 2019, according to https://www.cnsa.fr/budget-et-financement/budget#le-budget-2019 https://www.cnsa.fr/budget-et-financement/budget#le-budget-2...
- ptah 7y ago
  it reduced the death toll by 90%, possibly more if you take into account population growth
- thecleaner 7y ago
  I believe that this is a noble sentiment. But the bigger issue here is shouldnt just not stealing money on taxes be enough ? I cannot fathom why a lot of people have to act like heroes to get things done. EU in general doesnt seem to have a corruption problem or a moeny problem and yet the infrastructure feels lacking.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

cf141q5325 7y ago

For comparison last winter 13,000 died of influenza in France https://www.connexionfrance.com/Practical/Health/Flu-killed-13-000-this-winter https://www.connexionfrance.com/Practical/Health/Flu-killed-...

investologia 7y ago

France is rich country and AC might be considered in people from certain age It's not the first heat wave and from the speed the global warning is heading, we might see many more heat waves in the near future

Khanhanhan 7y ago
AC is one of the biggest global warming offenders and its use should be limited to certain spaces where people in need - including elderly people - could find shelter.
algaeontoast 7y ago
Why worry when according to alarmist politicians in the U.S. we only have “12 years left”. I find these claims, and those similar from “activists” like Greta Thunberg, wholly unproductive both to steps taken to actually curb climate change and legitimate science. Society isn’t going to cease growing and moving forward just because of climate change. It is unfortunately a reality that must be dealt with by creation and not regression. Even as someone who supports the idea that climate change is a very real challenge for humanity.
- onion2k 7y ago
  Society isn’t going to cease growing and moving forward just because of climate change. I don't think that's really what anyone is suggesting, but if the change impacts enough people society as a whole will focus on fixing the problem rather than doing other things.
  - zdragnar 7y ago
    > I don't think that's really what anyone is suggesting The sibling comment to yours suggesting exactly that wasn't the first, not by a long shot. US politicians have suggested everything from ending entire industries to massive increases in abortion to stop population growth. Others have suggested massive taxes to pay for health insurance and UBI so that people who don't feel like working don't have to. "Stop moving forward" might not a common phrase, but only because their version of "forward" is fundamentally different from the current one. Stopping growth is certainly a goal of many far-left thinkers out there.

lprd 7y ago

Not nearly as much as the 2003 heat wave; which took almost fifteen thousand lives in France alone. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave

rjsw 7y ago
The 2006 heatwave was as bad as 2003 but people were better prepared so not as many died.

paulsutter 7y ago

France population is 67 million and life expectancy is 82 years, so about 2000 people die every day. Over the 20 days of high heat, that’s about 70 extra people per day, or about 3 percent, just to put it in perspective. What percent of ordinary deaths would we expect to get attributed to high heat? Especially among the elderly? Disappointed in the 0% effort journalists make to put things in perspective.

skohan 7y ago
I would consider a 3% increase in mortality rate to be quite alarming.
- paulsutter 7y ago
  No information is provided whether the rate changed, only that the deaths were attributed to heat. This is the sort of homework I would expect of the journalist EDIT: regarding CNN, 9% doesn’t add up and the quote is vague. I know I’m crazy to expect journalists to care about numbers but it just bugs me
  - Steven_Vellon 7y ago
    CNN's reporting was better: https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/08/europe/france-heat-wave-deaths-intl-hnk-scli/index.html https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/08/europe/france-heat-wave-death... They report that the mortality rate was 9% higher than baseline during the heat wave.
    - ousta 7y ago
      what about mortality rate after? probably lower than baseline as well

papito 7y ago

Europe needs to get into the culture of air conditioning, cooling centers, and LARGE iced drinks.

zadkey 7y ago

I live in Texas. The heat wave that France is experienced this summer is like maybe 1 or 2 degrees Fahrenheit hotter than a normal summer for us. Preparedness for summer is deeply ingrained in everyone's minds here. Many Apartment complexes treat issues with AC units as emergency situations, reach out to on-call handymen and give high priority to their fix. In the city of Dallas, city code requires that property owners provide refrigerated air to tenants from April 1 to Nov. 1. "According to state law, landlords must fix any condition that threatens a tenant's health or safety. In Texas, that condition can include a sweltering day in a stuffy apartment with no air conditioning." It is my hope that people in France look for ways to prepare and better safeguard the health and well-being of their citizens against the heat. Some information taken from https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2009/10/07/dmn-problem-solver-renters-have-options-when-the-air-conditioner-doesn-t-get-fixed/ https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2009/10/07/dm...

negrit 7y ago
In France it's very very uncommon to have AC.
- cf498 7y ago
  Its not just France, its an issue across northern/western Europe. Combine that with the difficulty of getting a proper AC installed in a rented house/apartment with normal stone walls and it explains the current lack of AC units. Most landlord will immediately be scared for the buildings substance. The few AC units that you see are those "mobile" devices with a single tube hanging out of a window. Even window units are a rare occasion because of the kind of windows installed across the country. Not to mention regulations stopping renters from changing the outer appearance of the house. I really dont see a viable plan to retrofit living spaces in a reasonable time frame. At this point i would even be doubtful, that there would be enough people capable of doing the job available. An often overlooked point is also the situation in workplaces, some parts of Europe simply lack the worker protection needed during heatwaves. I honestly dont see how most countries in Europe could retrofit buildings to a detectable degree, let alone finance it. There are just to many older buildings build for another kind of climate. Providing air conditioned shelters during the weeks of deadly heat sounds like the most realistic option. That would be similar to what is being done in winter to prevent people from freezing to death.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

trothamel 7y ago

Note that according to https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.htm https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/05/150520193831.h... , which describes a study in The Lancet, "cold weather kills more than 20 times as many people as hot weather". So it kind of makes you wonder if this is something like the trolley problem - if raising the temperature sacrifices 1,500 lives to save 30,000, is it worth it?

PhasmaFelis 7y ago
If global warming continues on a worst-case trajectory, then large swathes of equatorial land may be uninhabitable to humans in 50 or 100 years. More than a billion people will be forced to migrate or die. If it comes to that, the death toll will be much worse than a few bad winters.

noonespecial 7y ago

I'd just like to take a moment (in light of some of the comments here) to say that air-conditioning is neither a moral failure nor an ecological disaster. An incentive to replace aging gas and electric heat with high efficiency modern heat-pumps that can both heat and cool is a clear ecological win. The question is (as ever) how can we fairly deploy this society changing tech so that those who need it most don't get it last.

mpalczewski 7y ago

That's certainly many people, and it sucks if someone you know died because of the head. However, I can't tell for a population like France if this is a large number. Would love to see something like, how many people die from cold in France each year, or other environmental effects.

cryptoz 7y ago
> However, I can't tell for a population like France if this is a large number. Sure you can. The number should be 0 for any country regardless of size, and 1500 is a huge number compared to 0. There's no reason in our modern society, with our ability to build iPhones and measure the weather with satellites, that a single person should die from a heat wave.
- mpalczewski 7y ago
  No I can't. That was unconvincing to me. It makes sense to me that in France a society (which by the way doesn't make iPhones, not sure how that applies here anyway) that has some sort of strange hang up about air conditioning would have people die of heat.

Scoundreller 7y ago

This is a vast improvement over previous heat waves where 15k died in 2003 France. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave At least it’s taken seriously rather than “it doesn’t get hot here and it will pass”.

Scoundreller 7y ago

My experience with a lot of French people isn’t just “we don’t need air conditioning”. It’s that “air conditioning makes you sick”. Even though most EU cars now come standard with AC, my experience is that the French would rather open the windows on the autoroute than turn hit the AC.

wtdata 7y ago

We need to stop with this ancient idea that AC is problematic against the environment. There are quite a few uninformed comments on this thread. Just by using their AC also in the winter to heat their houses instead of traditional heating systems, these people are already having a lower CO2 footprint (even when using the AC to cool down a few weeks in the year) than people that don't use an AC. Modern AC systems work with in inverter heat pump and are extremely efficient at cooling down and heating up a house since all they do is to move heat from one place to the other. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_conditioning

PauloManrique 7y ago

Funny thing is, the record high temperatures on France were LOWER than regular temperatures in several cities in Brazil.