Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Rally party, a descendant of the National Front, has been a political renovator. Her party, like other European formations with origins on the far right, has responded to anger and anxiety over the influx of Muslim immigrants by ditching open or covert antisemitism for something like philosemitism.
Her latest renovation project is on the French home itself. She wants to give homes, along with schools and hospitals, air-conditioning. France has an AC uptake rate of only 25 percent, half that of warmer but poorer Spain. Many greens and ideological environmentalists oppose air-conditioning itself, believing that it directly worsens climate change. But a record heat wave this summer has led to school shutdowns and a slowdown of life in France. Le Pen has proposed a big subsidized rollout, basically government-backed interstate free loans, to help bring AC to 40 million households along with almost all public facilities.
I won’t comment on the economics of this, as I think the scheme is probably a little daft. But polls seem to show support for it, and I think it may inadvertently solve the real problem, which isn’t economic. A combination of climate concerns and chauvinism toward supposedly philistine and reckless Americans, who love their AC, leads some French people to feel that there’s a social penalty for installing AC in their homes. Only 40 degree Celsius weather seems to have moved people to relent. Perhaps more important than the financial incentives is Le Pen’s proposition of a new norm for all French society. She thereby removes some of the first-mover problem in transforming the social climate of opinion on air-conditioning itself.
AC becomes normal. Everyone is doing it. It’s not just for a few in the south and for those renting out their homes to American tourists. You won’t be stigmatized for doing it. The whole building and every apartment is getting this, so it is not on you — you’re not weak, or Americanized, or selfish. This is just how French people live now. There is a little something of Lee Kuan Yew in such a proposal — a right-wing technocracy that is aimed at raising the standard of living. Again, I’m not recommending the scheme itself. But the vision of a France that isn’t afraid of AC, where it is just normal, is a healthy development.