My week has been punctuated by a series of emails:
“Your child’s dance class has been canceled due to the heatwave.”
“Gymnastics practice is canceled.”
“Afterschool classes are canceled.”
“Life is canceled!”
That last example isn’t literally true, but it sure is starting to feel like it.
Why We Wrote This
With France sweltering under another heat wave, many – including the Monitor’s Paris correspondent – are wondering why the country hasn’t made more headway in responding to the deadly temperatures.
Over the course of this week, temperatures across France are expected to reach up to 43 degrees Celsius, or 109 F. It is as hot in Paris as it is in Delhi, Doha, and the Mojave Desert. Most homes don’t have air conditioning, nor do many public hospitals, schools, office buildings, or cafés.
Unlike in the United States, where relief is only an iced drink away, the only reprieve possible here is making an hourslong trip to the grocery store, going to the cinema, or sticking your head in the freezer.
And so, in a fit of heat-driven panic, I bought cheap train tickets to the northern beach town of Trouville in search of cool.
But if this impromptu vacation is anything to go by, I am starting to realize that when it comes to this heat wave – and climate change in general – there is nowhere to run and nowhere to hide.
On Tuesday, as the train doors opened in Trouville, my whole body relaxed as I waited for a gust of cool sea air. Instead, I was met with a wall of dry heat unlike anything I have felt since a trip in my 20s to India’s Thar Desert.
And Tuesday night, as I waited for the temperatures to drop – surely – I instead spent the night splashing water on my face in the bathroom sink at two-hour intervals and swatting at a mosquito threatening to take what was left of my sanity.
“I came to France to escape the Phoenix heat!” said my expat friend Rose in exasperation, who has, like me, attempted in vain to find cooler air north.
For Rose, and many Parisians, the current heat wave is part of a much larger problem. This is not only the second weeklong heat wave in the past month, but also a recurring phenomenon that the French government has yet to properly address.
Last year, a prolonged heat wave in the months of June and July saw temperatures across the country soar past 100 F. The heat led to an estimated 480 heat-related deaths.
But this year, when my daughters’ school principal sent a message asking parents to keep kids home from school if possible – most classrooms had reached 90 F by the afternoon and were operating without even a simple fan – I felt exasperated: Why has nothing changed?
In reality, things are changing, ever so slowly. New buildings are incorporating innovative ventilation systems in order to cool down large spaces without air conditioning. The eastern French town of Vénissieux recently installed 150 ceiling fans in buildings around town. Some schools and office buildings are planting rooftop green spaces to cool buildings down.
But many say change is too slow to come.
Some of the reasons for delay are structural. The 1900s-era Haussmann buildings that dot the French cityscape are heritage-protected and require authorization to make changes. Newer high-rise apartments were built hastily and insulated poorly – freezing in winter, scorching in summer.
Some reasons are due to a lack of political will. This week, the French government has held a series of urgent interministerial meetings on solutions to heat waves and what looks to become France’s new normal. But politicians remain split on the path forward.
“Air conditioning is the best way to manage this type of situation, but it’s expensive,” said Roland Lescure, the French finance minister, this week. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen has pleaded for its widespread installation across the country. Meanwhile, Marine Tondelier, the national secretary of the Ecologistes party, said that air conditioning is “not a taboo, nor is it the answer to everything.”
Alice Sacco/Reuters
As politicians scramble for solutions, frustration is rising that the government only reacts at the time of heat waves but has no preventive measures in place. French people are roasting, and most do not have the means to pay for a last-minute vacation rental to skip town.
On the upper floors of Paris apartments, temperatures are reaching 95 F. At least 40 people have drowned this week in unsupervised swimming areas across the country, as they attempted to cool off. According to the French nonprofit Les Morts de la Rue (Deaths in the Street), 30% of deaths involving the homeless population take place in summer.
France’s current heat wave is, of course, an unavoidable reality for many areas of the world, especially the Global South. In parts of the developing world, air conditioning is expensive and rare. Climate change will contribute to 700,000 premature annual deaths around the world by 2030, according to a May 2022 study. The climate crisis is also amplifying displacement within countries and migration.
The Union of Concerned Scientists has written that the United States – the world’s biggest producer of greenhouse gas emissions – must cut its use of gasoline, diesel, and jet fuel by half in 2035 and by 85% in 2050 in order to meet its climate targets.
That’s a warning to the United States, but to the rest of the world as well. While there are the immediate solutions that need addressing – such as finding ways for communities to urgently cool off – there are bigger issues, too, such as reducing dependence on fossil fuels.
It is perhaps in moments like these, when even the most stoic French politicians find themselves drenched in sweat, that countries find solutions.
If the messages I’ve been receiving from friends lately are any indication, France’s existential crisis is real. “This heat is making me anxious,” wrote one. “What will become of our kids?” wrote another. Even Rose, in the midst of postpartum bliss, recently asked herself, “Why did I have more children?”
As I hide inside the depths of my slightly cooler Airbnb, wondering why I spent all this money to sit indoors all day, I am reminded of the pandemic: stuck inside, attempting to homeschool my daughters, and trying not to have a figurative – and literal – meltdown.
It’s hot and getting hotter. And there’s no escaping it.