{"id":80583,"date":"2026-06-27T02:04:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:04:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/80583\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T02:04:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T02:04:22","slug":"as-europe-sweats-some-politicians-talk-of-air-conditioning-not-climate-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/80583\/","title":{"rendered":"As Europe Sweats, Some Politicians Talk of Air-Conditioning, Not Climate Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was a crisp 54 degrees in Aberdeen, on the northeast coast of Scotland, last week when Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain\u2019s Conservative Party, once again championed<\/a> the country\u2019s fossil fuel industry.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe war on oil and gas must end,\u201d she insisted, prompting applause from supporters in the port city, a major hub<\/a> for petroleum extraction in the North Sea. \u201cWe need to get Britain drilling again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Eight days later, thermostats across southern England and Wales recorded soaring heat<\/a>, with temperatures in London nearing 100 degrees. Schools closed, trains were canceled or delayed and some hospitals halted elective procedures. The opening session of London Climate Action Week, focused on improving extreme heat governance, was called off<\/a> after Britain\u2019s national weather service, the Met Office, issued<\/a> a \u201cred warning.\u201d<\/p>\n

For politicians like Ms. Badenoch, who has called<\/a> herself a \u201cnet zero skeptic\u201d and whose party won a special election<\/a> in Aberdeen, the increasingly intense heat presents a challenge. How do they reconcile their support for faster extraction and use of polluting energy sources that contribute to the warming of the planet, with the reality of a planet that already feels like it\u2019s burning up?<\/p>\n

Andrew Bowie, the lawmaker who oversees energy policy for the Conservatives, said in response to a request for comment that Ms. Badenoch and the Conservatives supported the transition to cleaner energy, but added: \u201cIt\u2019s a transition, and it makes no sense at all to pursue net zero targets while inflicting higher energy bills on households, deindustrializing, and losing the potential tax revenue from exploiting our North Sea oil and gas resources.\u201d<\/p>\n

An anticipated spike in heat-related mortality<\/a> in Europe is already apparent. Five people have died from the heat in Italy, according to the country\u2019s main news agency, including several who were working outside and a homeless man. In France<\/a>, at least 40 people have drowned, many of them teenagers swimming in unsupervised areas. London\u2019s ambulance service said<\/a> that it had responded to its highest ever number of life-threatening emergencies on Wednesday.<\/p>\n

Everyone agrees something must be done. But not everyone agrees on what that should be.<\/p>\n

Increasingly, the answer from right-wing politicians is to focus on a short-term fix that almost everyone agrees is necessary \u2014 the installation of air-conditioning units in European homes, schools, public buildings and hospitals.<\/p>\n

During intense heat waves, calling for improvement of the sometimes crumbling infrastructure of aging European cities can be an effective way of drawing attention to that problem without saying much about the longer-term, underlying cause: rising greenhouse gas emissions.<\/p>\n

In France, far-right politicians who have advocated cutting net zero initiatives hope to gain from the heat wave, using it to accuse the government of failing to make the country more resilient<\/a>, but also as a cultural issue against the hard left, which has often opposed the use of air-conditioning on environmental grounds.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I am elected president, I will put into place a massive air-conditioning plan,\u201d Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally party, pledged on Friday, \u201cstarting in places with the most vulnerable populations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ms. Le Pen argues that air-conditioning units do not exacerbate global warming, saying that \u201cwhen environmentalists don\u2019t want something, they twist the studies, they pull things out of context.\u201d<\/p>\n

New air-conditioning units have become greener<\/a> in recent years, but they still contribute to climate change by guzzling electricity, which, if it doesn\u2019t come from renewable sources, contributes to the emissions that warm the planet. These units also pump hot air outside buildings as they push cold air inside, adding to the already hot weather. And they put enormous strain on Europe\u2019s aging electrical grid, especially when they are running full blast to ward off extreme heat.<\/p>\n

In the context of northern Europe\u2019s traditionally mild, temperate climate, some left-wing and green parties opposed air-conditioning and have instead favored renovating buildings<\/a> with architectural fixes to keep them cool when it gets hot. But the dangers to health posed by this week\u2019s heat wave are piling pressure on that view \u2014 and changing minds.<\/p>\n

In the Belgian city of Ghent, which is run mostly by left-of-center politicians, the municipal website this week discouraged citizens from using air-conditioners, saying that \u201cthe best air-conditioner is a tree\u201d and advising they use fans and request a free tree to plant outside their houses.<\/p>\n

Maurits Vande Reyde, a right-wing member of the Flemish Parliament, responded to Ghent\u2019s recommendations on social media.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absurd that all governments in our country, under pressure from left-green mumbo-jumbo, advise against the use of air-conditioning,\u201d he wrote on Tuesday. \u201cThe most efficient and best solution. How many deaths would the government already have on its conscience with this kind of absurd advice?\u201d<\/p>\n

After The New York Times sent a request for comment, Ghent removed wording that read \u201cavoid air-conditioners,\u201d replacing it with the phrase \u201ccool smartly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thomas Dierckens, a spokesman for the mayor of Ghent, said in a written comment that the city was not against air-conditioning \u2014 noting that it had installed 30 portable air-conditioners into day care centers this week.<\/p>\n

\u201cHealth always comes first\u201d in a heat wave, he said.<\/p>\n

Marine Tondelier, the head of the Green Party in France, acknowledged that she was \u201cbreaking a taboo<\/a>\u201d when she said on Tuesday that \u201cthere are places where we can no longer do without air-conditioning.\u201d<\/p>\n

In London, Sadiq Khan, the center-left Labour Party mayor, said on Thursday that air-conditioning would need to be installed<\/a> in the capital\u2019s schools, offices and hospitals, as he warned<\/a> that London needed to \u201cact now\u201d to strengthen its resilience ahead of worse heat waves<\/a> to come. And at the European level, Terry Reintke, co-president of the European Parliament\u2019s Green group, said in an interview that some air-conditioning was necessary, alongside longer-term solutions like planting more green spaces.<\/p>\n

Unlike in the United States, where climate change politics have become more divided<\/a> during Mr. Trump\u2019s terms, there is still broad support in Britain and Europe for taking action to tackle global warming.<\/p>\n

In a survey last year<\/a> by Eurobarometer, the European Union\u2019s public opinion service, about 85 percent of respondents said that they consider climate change a serious problem for the world, and action against climate change a public-health priority. A survey in the United States last year<\/a> showed a much smaller proportion of people who even believed that climate change was happening.<\/p>\n

A wide body of research on European voters has found that extreme weather events linked to climate change can influence politics, but that such events do not guarantee a backlash to climate-skeptic parties.<\/p>\n

A 2025 study by Jessica Haak<\/a>, a political scientist at the University of Hamburg, found that abnormally high temperatures in Germany had delivered a small but meaningful increase in support for the Green Party, suggesting a link between extreme heat and support for climate action.<\/p>\n

A similar study in 2022<\/a> by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research found voters in areas affected by heat waves, droughts and other environmental events were more likely to support European politicians who backed climate action \u2014 but with an important catch. The authors found that support only increased when the economy was strong.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007\u20142008, for example,\u201d the authors write in the study, \u201ca substantial reduction in environmental concerns was observable across all European regions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Europe\u2019s far-right parties have tried to tap into economic concerns and focus attention on burdensome regulations. Governments are scrambling to respond to extreme weather, from floods to heat, meaning this can be fertile ground for voter frustration.<\/p>\n

Last month, Nicola Procaccini, the co-chairman of the right-leaning European Conservatives and Reformists Group in the European Parliament, said that<\/a> \u201cinstead of focusing on adaptation to climate change, investing resources in the protection of territories and people, the choice was made to sacrifice the growth of the European economy and support for people, especially the most vulnerable, on the altar of \u2018climate mitigation.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In fact, scientists say that both adaptation and mitigation are urgently required. \u201cHeat waves are becoming more frequent, longer and hotter with climate change, as a direct result of the fossil fuels we are releasing as a society,\u201d Prof. Hayley Fowler of Newcastle University said in an emailed comment. \u201cOur current climate is the least extreme we will live in our lifetimes, and certainly until we reach net zero, and we need to adapt urgently.\u201d<\/p>\n

In London this week, environmentalists were hoping that the intense weather would underscore their arguments.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is irony in the fact that a London Climate Action Week event had to be canceled due to extreme heat in a temperate, wealthy country,\u201d said Chris Anderson, head of climate risk and resilience at Practical Action, an environmental group.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re fully in favor of the decision for the well-being of attendees and panelists,\u201d he said, \u201cbut it shows that extreme weather is becoming unpredictable and moving faster than people can adapt, even in the richest countries.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reporting was contributed by Mark Landler and S\u00e9gol\u00e8ne Le Stradic from Paris, Jim Tankersley from Berlin. Megan Specia from London and Koba Ryckewaert from Brussels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It was a crisp 54 degrees in Aberdeen, on the northeast coast of Scotland, last week when Kemi…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":80584,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43444,31785,43446,12497,4,15,43445,3550,3317,32609,23749,33362,10738,11269,41816,1594],"class_list":["post-80583","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-europe","tag-aberdeen-scotland","tag-air-conditioning","tag-badenoch","tag-drought","tag-europe","tag-european","tag-ghent-belgium","tag-global-warming","tag-great-britain","tag-heat-and-heat-waves","tag-heating","tag-kemi","tag-oil-petroleum-and-gasoline","tag-politics-and-government","tag-polls-and-public-opinion","tag-weather"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80583","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80583"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80583\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/80584"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80583"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80583"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80583"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}