An Air conditioning unit is seen at a window of an apartment building as temperatures rise in Nantes, during a heatwave affecting a majority of the country, France, June 25, 2026.(Stephane Mahe/Reuters)
As Europe's heat wave persists, the debateover air-conditioning rages on. The New York Timesnotes 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 ...
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