The tragedy of all those deaths in France during the recent heatwave is now well-known, but their underlying cause still remains unclear. Was the fraying of traditional bonds to blame or structural problems in the French healthcare sector? Perhaps, but this piece by Cato’s Patrick Michaels suggests that a more mechanical problem may be to blame : the lack of air-conditioning:

”The mathematics of this problem are terribly transparent. In order to meet their self-imposed targets from the Kyoto Protocol (search) on global warming, European nations already have taxed energy, but they have not done enough. Consequently, even more restrictions are being proposed, especially by the German government. Unaffordable air conditioning will become even more expensive, killing more and more Europeans the next time the temperature reaches what passes for a few degrees above what is normal in Dallas.

Europe has effectively imposed a continuous blackout on air conditioning, and now it is paying the price.

Some people will point to the hundreds of people who died in the infamous July 1995 Chicago heat wave and wonder how we could have ignored this obvious tragedy. We didn’t.

Normally many more die on the poorer South Side of the city, but not in 1995. A power outage hit the affluent North Side early on and the air conditioning went out. As they say, Q.E.D.

And as for the heat-prostrated people of Europe, it’s too bad that the Kyoto Protocol will do nothing measurable about the Earth’s mean temperature for the forseeable future. But it will kill thousands and thousands more in France, Germany and England, where energy taxes are enormous, creating an invisible blackout of lifesaving air conditioning.”

Intriguing.