It’s important not to stretch too far when looking to draw wider meaning from the appalling number of heat-wave related deaths this summer in France. The French family is not about to fall apart, and France’s healthcare system is better than anything across the English Channel. That said, a death toll on the scale that occurred was more than a series of individual tragedies, and it deserves more of a response than it seems to have got.

Writing for Austria’s Format magazine, Christian Ortner has not been impressed:

“”European intellectuals went wild when the electricity failed in Baghdad. They note the 10,000 heat deaths in France with a shrug of the shoulders.”

This is an analogy that shouldn’t be pushed too far, but interesting nonetheless.

Via Bill Dawson blogging away from Vienna