Apparently, cranking up the A/C in near-40-degree heat is now “cheating” and killing the environment
Paris was melting last week, flirting with 40°C and zero chill. Apparently, the moment was ripe for an epiphany.
I was in an Uber, as one does when public transport becomes a slow cooker. I always enjoy chatting with the driver – usually Algerian or Moroccan. We got to talking about our lives and what led us to France. At one point he looked at me and said, “No husband, no kids, and you have air conditioning! You’re totally cheating at life!”
“Cheating,” huh? Interesting word choice. So opting out of the standard life script is breaking the rules? But whose rules? The ones written by the establishment – whichever power structure has successfully colonized your brain.
I was fortunate to have been raised by parents who believed in free thought, not groupthink, and who told me that you should be able to do anything you want with your life as long as you’re not harming others. Which is a long way of saying that if I want to crank the A/C during a heatwave in my own home, it’s nobody’s business. Especially not that of some guy in the front seat of a Peugeot who thinks that I’ve short-circuited the Matrix.
But the fact that he grouped air conditioning with not having kids or a man says a lot. It’s not just cultural expectations, but also the deep programming of state-sanctioned virtue that has come to dominate cultural norms. And in France, one of the strangest markers of virtue is rejecting modern cooling technology.
The week was so blisteringly hot that the French government anticipated shutting down 1,350 schools so kids could sweat it out at home instead of in class.
Even the local public swimming pool had to close – the one place that usually offers relief – because the deck hit 50°C and the water was bathtub temperature.
Instead, the French spent the day playing what I call the “Blinds and Windows Game.” Open everything in the morning. Close it all when the heat starts. Pull the blinds down just right so the sun hits the metal outside instead of the window glass. I opted out. I’ve got better things to do than play around with my window coverings. So I turned on the air conditioning.
My neighbors were not fans. I’ve had a mob of French residents of my building bang on my door demanding that I turn it off. Why? Because they spotted the portable A/C exhaust tubes poking out my window. Having ignored them, I later received a formal letter with instructions on when I was allowed to use it. According to them, that would only be when they collectively decide that the temperature justifies it – and only during certain hours. “For the well being of everyone,” they wrote, before launching into a sermon about how A/C is bad for the environment and ruins it for everyone else.
Give me a break. This is a country powered by decarbonized nuclear energy, so the climate change excuse doesn’t work here. But even without that, they invent new reasons: It causes “thermal shock.” It gives you neck spasms. It’s “unnatural air.” It’ll make you sick…
Like the outdated idea that every woman should anchor her existence around a husband and kids, the anti-A/C dogma should stop where logic and personal freedom begin. No, gyms shouldn’t be set to 26°C in the summer because some guy wants to do five squats and scroll on his phone without feeling “chilly” during a heatwave. You shouldn’t be sweating through your clothes at the movies. And hospitals and nursing homes shouldn’t feel like a slow death in a convection oven.
But the moment far-right National Rally leader Marine Le Pen suggested a “grand plan for air conditioning” a few days ago, the narrative defenders of the establishment status quo promptly lost it.
“Air conditioning saves lives. Letting people die in hospitals, or letting children or vulnerable people suffer because there is no air conditioning, is completely absurd,” Le Pen said in the National Assembly.
The opposition Ecologists’ national secretary Marine Tondelier shot back that “air conditioning won’t suffice.” Guess they’re still hoping to lower the Earth’s thermostat manually. Since they’re clearly failing, despite all the lifestyle sacrifices they’ve extracted from us, maybe we could at least normalize cooling the rooms we actually live in.
Apparently not. France’s Ecological Transition Minister, Agnès Pannier-Runacher of Macron’s Renaissance party, said that it was okay to “air condition vulnerable people” but “not everywhere.” Because “global warming.”
Oh, please. Go yell at your German Green pals from the last coalition government, that had to fire up coal plants that dump filth into Europe’s air, all because their sacred renewables can’t carry the load.
Meanwhile, France Unbowed – the left-wing party – whined that “wealthy households are increasingly choosing air conditioning and installing it as they see fit.” And…we’re back to that whole “cheating” mantra again. Can’t be letting rich people cheat, now! As if everyone who has a portable A/C unit in their bedroom is also cooling off in champagne baths.
Portable A/C units cost a few hundred euros. What actually makes them expensive are things like the EU’s dumb carbon credit scheme. Also, cutting off cheap Russian gas didn’t help, especially since EU electricity prices are based on the most expensive fuel needed to generate it, as Le Monde has pointed out.
It took a populist uprising in the 1960s and 70s for women to escape a system that once required a husband’s permission just to open a bank account. More recently, populism clawed back some sanity from endless wars, uncontrolled migration, and technocratic tyranny disguised as “democracy.”
It’s going to take another wave of that same rebellious spirit to end the delusion that sweating through 40-degree heat is some noble sacrifice. Using air conditioning isn’t cheating – forcing everyone else to suffer with you in your stiflingly hot ideological straitjacket is.
If cranking the heat in winter is a right, then staying cool in July shouldn’t feel like joining the Resistance. But until things change, I’ll just keep leading the underground. Vive la clim’!
