When horrible things happen to people you care about, it’s only natural to seek someone to blame. If you ask the mayoral administration in charge of Paris, France, it seems responsibility for Europe’s devastating heatwave is being placed on the United States’ affinity for air conditioning.
Last week, recently-elected Paris mayor Emmanuel Grégoire went on the record with Le Monde amidst one of the worst heatwaves in the city’s history — an event which has reportedly resulted in over 1,000 excess deaths across France.
Asked whether Parisians should rush out to install AC units in their homes which famously shun them, Grégoire sharply disagreed, saying that “individual air conditioning is a scourge — it makes the problem worse by heating the city even more.”
That prompted plenty of derision from talking heads in the United States, who laughed off the notion as a bunch of woke Parisians who don’t understand real heat.
