As Europe’s heat wave persists, the debate over air-conditioning rages on. The New York Times notes that the populist right has weighed in (in fact this is not the first year that these parties have done so):
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, but also as a cultural issue against the hard left, which has often opposed the use of air-conditioning on environmental grounds.
The NYT, like other outlets on the left, uses the term “cultural” in this kind of context to reduce substantive political or economic disagreement by the right to the fighting of “culture wars.”
There is no contradiction between opposing the failing and futile “Paris” net-zero strategy, which, even if successful, will have little material effect on the climate for years, and advocating wider use of AC, which offers an immediate solution to an immediate problem and, as such, is a good example of adaptation. In some respects, objecting to those Europeans who would prefer to install AC now rather than wait decades for an era of (perhaps) fewer very hot days is like mocking a man who buys an umbrella while the construction of a bus shelter is still underway.
It is true that additional AC use will lead to extra greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions (if much less so in France, which relies on nuclear power for roughly 70 percent of its electricity), but longer-term remediation should not get in the way of shorter-term adaptation.
Michael D. Shear and Jeanna Smialek, the authors of the New York Times report, relate that AC units “put enormous strain on Europe’s aging electrical grid, especially when they are running full blast to ward off extreme heat.”
To the extent that this is the case (it can be), it reveals that European governments have not thought through the apocalyptic climate warnings they have been making for years. If they “knew” that much hotter heat waves were coming, they should have first upgraded their grids and built more power stations using proven technology. Instead they chose to spend billions on unreliable “renewable” energy, billions that could have been put to work in an infinitely more productive way.
In Ghent, Belgium, a city “run mostly by left-of-center politicians” (uh-oh), the authorities came up with (they thought) an answer.
The NYT’s Shear & Smialek:
[The] municipal website this week discouraged citizens from using air-conditioners, saying that “the best air-conditioner is a tree” and advising they use fans and request a free tree to plant outside their houses.
I may not know much about “nature,” but I do know that a tree, even if given a head start by being planted as a sapling, is going to take a while to grow.
The municipality’s advice was mocked by Maurits Vande Reyde, “a right-wing member of the Flemish Parliament.”
“Right-wing,” eh? Could he even be “far right?”
I trembled and turned lazily to Wikipedia:
Across most of his career at the VLD, Vande Reyde was often considered to be one of the party’s more right-leaning members, placing less emphasis on the more socially liberal, progressive elements that the party establishment had embraced and instead prioritizing classical liberal ideals, such as a radical push for a smaller government, fiscal conservatism, less taxes, less regulation, less bureaucracy and more entrepreneurship. He has often criticized the ways that mainstream Belgian politics and governments have handled taxation, budget deficits and granting subsidies to lobby’s [sic].
Nooooooooo.
It only gets worse:
He is opposed to the inheritance tax and voted for abolishing financial benefits for purchasing zero-emission vehicles.
Back to the NYT, where Shear and Smialek report on what Vande Reyde had to say:
“It is absurd that all governments in our country, under pressure from left-green mumbo-jumbo, advise against the use of air-conditioning,” he wrote on Tuesday. “The most efficient and best solution. How many deaths would the government already have on its conscience with this kind of absurd advice?
Good question. In this heat wave, it is not climate change that is proving lethal, but climate policy.
Shear and Smialek:
After The New York Times sent a request for comment, Ghent removed wording that read “avoid air-conditioners,” replacing it with the phrase “cool smartly.”