For a region that probably invests more heavily in climate change mitigation initiatives than any other, Europe doesn’t cope well with extreme heat. This is especially ironic given that global warming is the target for all mitigation policy and strategy.
Anyone in France recently will know that the heatwave headlines were taken up with over 50 drownings, toddlers found dead in locked cars, excessive deaths of the elderly, etc. and we are only in early summer. A column in French newspaper Le Monde thundered ‘Heatwaves lay bare policymaking failings in the harshest possible way. No talking point, denial or speech could erase the 10 days of hardship endured by millions of people across France, whether at home or commuting, at work, in public spaces, on farms, in schools, nurseries, nursing homes or hospitals. Everyone saw firsthand that society as a whole, including individuals, businesses, government bodies and more, was not prepared for this kind of shock.’
The same strictures on lack of serious government counter-measures can surely be applied in some proportion to most other nations in Europe, which as a continent, alarmingly, is warming up twice as fast as the global average. In the UK, for example, there is still no official National Heat Resilience Strategy although, in 2023, a progress report from the Climate Change Committee found ‘very limited evidence of the implementation of adaptation at the scale needed to fully prepare for climate risks facing the UK’.
This raises the fundamental issue of adaptation versus mitigation. Can we really wait for the era of Net Zero carbon emissions to kick in at some increasingly vague date decades away? Are we even certain that we have the science?
At successive annual meetings of the UN related Conference of the Parties (COP), countries around the world far more vulnerable to the impact of climate change have long pleaded the case for investment in adaptation. They add the moral argument that the developed nations, whose prosperity has been founded on fossil-fuel consumption, should compensate countries impacted by the global warming for which they are responsible.
Let’s not forget, too, that Europe’s periodic heatwave crises pale into insignificance when compared with large swathes of China, India, southeast Asia and Africa that, mostly with fewer resources, have to contend with long periods of intensifying heat, prompting speculation about future mass population migrations to escape drought and lack of food.
The extreme example is India, particularly given its 1.4 billion population. According to a report by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, in late April, all 50 of the world’s hottest cities were within its borders. By May, that figure had climbed to 97 out of the top 100 with Balangir in Odisha registering a wicked 48°C. In addition, India’s average relative humidity rose from 67.1% between 2015 and 2019 to 71.2% between 2020 and 2024. Some research suggests that a wet-bulb temperature — the combined measure of heat and humidity — of 35°C is the threshold beyond which even a healthy, resting adult with ample water and shade will experience a fatal rise in core temperature within hours. Those benefits are hard to come by in India where air-conditioning is only available to a select 8%.
If only air-conditioning for all were the answer. Americans are fond of mocking Europe for its lack of A/C. Nearly 90% of homes in the US have A/C compared with 20% in Europe. The reasons for this are largely historic, there was no need in the past. In the words of leading French climatologist Valérie Masson-Delmotte, ‘The climate in which our societies were built and developed no longer exists’.
Housing stock in many European cities is not built to withstand much hotter temperatures, and the cost of retrofitting A/C would be prohibitive and not necessarily advisable. Critics say it drives up electricity demand, strains power grids, releases hot air into the atmosphere and fails to tackle the underlying causes of the climate crisis.
In 2023 an almost mischievous research study in the journal Environmental Science & Technology warned of the danger of US cities’ dependence on electricity power generation. It speculated that in the event of a prolonged two-day power blackout during heatwave conditions in the city of Phoenix, Arizona, one per cent of the population (13,250) would die and half the city (816,570) would end up in emergency. Local officials responded that such a combination of events was improbable and in any case the city was well prepared.
The EU itself is ambivalent on A/C. Anna-Kaisa Itkonen, European Commission spokesperson for climate, told Euronews recently, ‘We know most residential buildings and apartments in the European Union do not have air conditioning. It's not something that is traditionally in-built, especially given that much of our housing stock is actually quite old and aged … in private households, these are issues where the Commission is not micromanaging how people should be going about this.’
European cities have been addressing the issues. Since 2008 the European Covenant of Mayors for Climate & Energy has brought together over 10,000 urban authorities to consider climate action in (and by) cities on a voluntary basis. Urban planners in many European cities are implementing ‘green’ measures to help cities manage the heat. But such adaptation seems minimal. For the foreseeable future, without A/C, keeping curtains closed during the day, opening windows at night, plus many other well-meaning recommendations, will have to do in order to stay cool.
Views expressed in Crosstalk are solely those of the author, who can be contacted at andrew@andrewmcbarnet.com.
