What is Europe even for? Decline and tragedy at the heart of the West

When you have managed decline, and endorse it too.

The author dismisses Trump's comments on mass migration, but that only worsens the fiscal problems he does cite. He also approvingly cites the left wing policies that're weakening Europe, while later saying Europe should follow Mario Draghi's recommendations. Ironic.

What is Europe even for? Decline and tragedy at the heart of the West - The Globe and Mail

"European leaders at the Munich Security Conference this month, the world’s premier geopolitics summit, where the elders of the Old World spent a weekend telling everyone it was all going to be okay.

Times are bad, but we are strong. Such was the energy of the conference. The embodiment of this message was French President Emmanuel Macron, who, without saying the words, anointed himself Captain Continent. “Europe has been vilified as an aging, slow, fragmented construct,” but in fact “everyone should take their cue from us,” he said...

Try as they might to project otherwise – and perhaps because those continental leaders tried so hard – it is plain that outside, beyond the hotel’s 19th-century façade, Europe’s light is fading.

The EU has irreversibly fractured with Brexit, no matter how much British Prime Minister Keir Starmer said it ain’t so in Munich. War creeps from the east, and Big Brother USA unfriends Europe and eyes its wallet. Not that there’s much to take. Britain’s and France’s economies are barely growing, and Germany’s is stagnant. Facing crushing debt and populist upheaval, continental governments are revolving doors where nothing gets done. Today prisoner exchanges are done in the United Arab Emirates. Gaza peace talks are held in Qatar. Ukraine negotiations might be held in Geneva, but Europe was not at the table...

A once-mighty people has been brought low. “Europe is a myth,” Larry Fink, head of BlackRock, the world’s largest investment firm, said at a WEF panel. “It’s a beautiful myth, but it’s not working.” Or, using the gamer-speak recently adopted by Tesla’s Elon Musk, one might say the continent has become a “non-playable character.”

It raises a tough question: What is Europe even for? And for those on the other side of the West, who draw our values and institutions from the old country, it raises a further question: What does an irrelevant Europe mean for us?...

We can trace the source of European decline endlessly. Brendan Simms, the Cambridge scholar, writes about five centuries of the destructive “struggle for supremacy” among the closely packed European powers that led to their second-fiddle status to the United States. Ian Morris of Stanford University traces the origins of Brexit for 10,000 years. Canadian prime minister William Lyon Mackenzie King once said “some countries have too much history.” Such is Europe’s tragedy.

History was what culminated in the Second World War and the utter devastation it wrought. It was only American money that saved the continent, aid from a land unravaged by war. And the Old World was never again the same.

In 1956, Britain and France invaded Egypt after the latter seized the Suez Canal, a major shipping route they funded. But U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower, who disdained such echoes of colonialism, had his own geopolitical priorities. Mr. Eisenhower, who had Britain deeply in his pocket, threatened to sell British bonds and ruin its economy. Prime minister Anthony Eden lost that standoff, and then lost his job.

Then Britain would find it could not even win a stare-down against China, a backwater only recently recognized by the world. In 1982, a steely Deng Xiaoping, the chain-smoking Chinese leader no taller than five feet, bluntly threatened to invade Hong Kong. Britain made concession after concession and walked away with what is arguably nothing. It left prime minister Margaret Thatcher “depressed,” she later said. So shameful was that moment, Queen Elizabeth II was deliberately kept away from the handover ceremony.

History has these moments sometimes, which capture the tides of centuries: Europe had become neutered, wearing a veneer of wealth but underneath just a sick man of the West.

In a rules-based world where institutions are respected, all of this might have mattered less. It may even have been better. One man’s lustrous past is another’s colonial nightmare. The world was moving in a new direction, away from the might-makes-right that has defined much of existence. A new Europe emerged: less powerful, more compassionate, an enthusiastic champion of a new multilateral world. And Europe found a new sort of power.

But then that veneer of wealth started to crack. As entitlements piled up, debt grew and growth slowed. The 2008 financial crisis sparked the eurozone sovereign-debt crisis. The American economy was once about the same as the EU’s, but over the past 20 years, the U.S. economy has more than doubled to US$30-trillion; the 27 EU countries’ economies are at only US$20-trillion, barely more than that of one rising China.

Six U.S. companies founded in the last five decades are valued at more than €1-trillion. In Europe, no company founded during that period is worth even a tenth of that. Some higher-education rankings show only one EU university in the world’s top 30. “Europe is no longer at the forefront of progress,” the European Central Bank’s Ms. Lagarde said in 2024. Europe has been content with old-school industries such as machinery, trains and cars. And those depend on two items that are now either gone or going: cheap Russian energy and abundant Chinese demand. On top of that, China now also makes machines. The proportion of sectors in which China vies directly with the eurozone is 40 per cent now, up from 25 per cent at the turn of the millennium.

Meanwhile, France has now seen five prime ministers in just over two years. Its troubles are the same ones that broke the unwieldy coalition of Germany’s former leader Olaf Schulz, the same that Chancellor Friedrich Merz now faces and the same afflicting the British government that saw six prime ministers in 10 years and its chancellor of the exchequer crying in parliament: Welfare, pensions, healthcare – the entitlements that once stemmed from prosperity now weigh on budgets, but woe be to any government that tries to cut them or raise taxes to fund them.

And so radical politics rise in Europe, for anger and empty stomachs push people toward flashy prophets. In France and Germany, centrist coalitions are barely holding on.

Add to this the return of Donald Trump and geopolitical brinkmanship. The United States does not want to carry Europe or the world order anymore. And we live now in an era of extremes: If you’re not a superpower, you’re not a power at all...

The fraying of the transatlantic partnership, like a rotting carcass, is now attracting vultures. China sees the decay of what Germans call the Weltordnung, and it sees further reason to test Europe, to play hardball in trade talks. Russia, already bent on regional dominance, flies drones into Poland and Romania. Seldom before, perhaps not since the Dark Ages or the fall of Constantinople, has such a proud continent seemed so small in such a big world.

After it came back from a season break in 2024, Emily in Paris, the show about an American gallivanting across a caricatured continent, was 36.6 times more popular in Canada than a typical Netflix production. Forty-four per cent of Canadians want this country to join the European Union. These data confirm anecdotes: It’s hard to go a week without seeing friends’ Instagram pictures from Porto or Tuscany. And you somehow know six people who have done a semester abroad in Aarhus or Stuttgart.

This Euro-lust is not undeserved. Decline is long. Ask a Roman in the fourth century, and she would not know that her empire was falling. Even as Europe fades, its wellspring of soft power remains visible. Canada’s cultural ties aside, we live in a world that Europeans built. China’s super rich have snapped up European vineyards. North Korea’s Kim Jong-un studied in Switzerland. The Thai king treats Germany as a second home. The UAE loves France’s Louvre museum so much it spent US$1.3-billion on licensing and loan fees for Louvre Abu Dhabi.

Indeed, the vestiges of Europe’s power show precisely why its decline is a problem: We mourn a loss only when it has value.

Even with Mr. Trump’s disdain for Europe, he mandates that new federal buildings use classical architecture to “visually connect our contemporary Republic with the antecedents of democracy in classical antiquity.” Mr. Trump swears by Italian suits and Swiss watches. Germany’s Mr. Merz charmed Mr. Trump with an invitation to his ancestral hometown. Britain’s Mr. Starmer used a royal invitation as a trump card during his visit to the White House. Mr. Trump later also accepted an invitation to the Dutch royal palace. Mr. Carney, to assert Canada’s sovereignty, invited King Charles to deliver the throne speech, an event the likes of which have not been seen in nearly half a century. Cambridge’s Prof. Simms has suggested making Charles emperor of Europe, a modern day Charlemagne, to stabilize the continent.

There’s even some power left that is more than soft. There’s a saying that the United States innovates, and the EU regulates. It’s meant derogatively – that the United States gives the world internet giants and the artificial-intelligence boom, and Europe mandates caps that stick on bottles (for better recycling) and made Apple use USB-C. But think about the impact. The EU sets global standards in regulating climate protection, competition, food handling, privacy and social media. In a world often criticized for unbridled capitalism, where trillion-dollar corporations are gaining unprecedented power, the EU is the lone bulwark against problems that the free market either creates or cannot address.

And where Europe retreats, its antithesis fills in the blanks. It sounded like a good thing when the colonial powers left Africa, and it was, but now we do not live in a good world. Russia’s Africa Corps, mercenaries who took over from the Wagner Group, have been active in six countries that we know of and probably more that we don’t; more than half of that continent has some military pact with Moscow. China has stakes in 46 ports and includes all but two countries in its Belt and Road infrastructure program. In Djibouti, Chinese debt has accounted for as much as 70 per cent of the economy. Eyeing Africa’s natural resources, Russia and China now own so much of the continent that there are reports of them meeting and clashing with each other. In the United Nations, most of Africa votes with China and Russia, although that’s probably no big deal – who cares about UN votes these days?

Europe’s decline exacerbates the trajectory the world is on, and we will end up with a meaner, smaller place. If Europe does not fix its trajectory, it would be to the detriment of not just itself – and therein is also a lesson particular to Canada.

In this new era, institutions and soft power – no longer underpinned by the hard power of the United States – no longer command the clout they used to. Now it is all about defence and industry. It’s about power and money, although it boils down to just money, for that is where power comes from.

Mario Draghi, the former European Central Bank chief and Italian prime minister, painstakingly wrote 400 pages on this subject in 2024, calling for regulatory reforms, a unified capital market and €800-billion more per year in business investment, among 170 recommendations. “We have reached the point where, without action, we will have to either compromise our welfare, our environment or our freedom,” Mr. Draghi said. “This is an existential challenge.” But, as Politico noted, “Draghi’s report got about a day’s worth of coverage in the continent’s major media outlets and then was quickly forgotten.” European leaders must heed that report.

Beyond the major, structural changes, there’s a simple solution: Work harder. Continental productivity is still relatively high – how much economic value a worker produces with how much work. It’s just that Germans work 86 hours for every 100 hours Americans work, and the French work even less at 77 hours. In Britain, critics say, decades of social policy that saw work as inherently bad for mental health has resulted in a vicious circle of unemployment. Germany’s Mr. Merz lectured his country earlier this month, saying, “Work-life balance and a four-day week will not be enough to maintain our country’s current level of prosperity.”

In that respect Canada shares something with Europe: Through our trade and security dependency, we, too, have been propped up by the Americans, who now grow weary of that role. We must take in a lesson: Throughout modern history, dark trends originate on the continent and then ripple forth. In Europe, this country sees a crystal ball, threatening a future in which we, too, will be so irrelevant.

Some of Canada’s path will be easier than Europe’s. Canada has vast natural resources, and a handful of provinces and territories is easier to corral than 27 countries plus the others. But while Europe can simply work harder, Canada is already working hard – we work the same hours as Americans, but with our abysmal productivity we make only European wages. Something has got to change.

The greatest issue of all is that one of Canada’s strengths is also a weakness: We have but a handful of provinces and territories – a small internal market that has problems trading with even itself. Europe, the second-biggest economy, can stand alone and be the big cheese if it musters the will. But Canada, the world’s 10th-largest economy, never can. For Canada to prosper and stand tall, we need a stable world order and big players in it that respect that order. Canada needs a strong Europe.

So, it is all the more important that Europe gets its act together. It must accept the inevitability that life will get harder. The only choice is when. For all the 100-page reports and complex proposals from various policy shops, it really boils down to a marshmallow test: Will Europe make the hard decisions today so that it may have a better tomorrow, or will it coast on accumulated wealth and standing until it all runs out?"

 

Links - 13th July 2026 (2 - Air Conditioning in Europe)

Melissa Chen on X - "How on earth did air-conditioning become so right-wing coded? Apparently man can conquer biological sex, but God forbid he conquers the heat wave"

CJ on X - "It's actually because socialist countries are too poor to afford the cost of an AC unit and its high electric usage. Only by supporting capitalism can the average person afford it."
NekoGaDaisuki on X - "You forgot some details : Is is also forbidden to protect the most at risk, such as our old ones, our kids, people that are disabled or with pathologies that put them in danger, etc.. Here in France, it is "bad" apparently to expect schools, regardless of the students age, as well as hospitals and EHPAD to have reversible heat pumps (pompes à chaleur), because bureaucracy and ecologist apparently consider it is needed to fill tons of papers just to "ask" for permission to provide air-conditionning. Oh, also, look at the irony : we are told the global warming is a reality, so lets enact laws that force new constructions to be more efficient during the winter (because global warming for shure) while these new buildings are littéral ovens during the summer. Yes that is a thing, it is called RT2012 construction standard in France. Earth becomes hotter, but lets make our lives hotter than ever just to be sure..."
Ex-Lefties on X - "The ideas of anthropogenic climate change and the solution to that 'problem': the sustainable economy are both communist coded. Communists believe that everything which opposes them is right-wing coded."

How Europe Became the World Champion of Heat Deaths - "a Frenchman relaxing in a spacious air-conditioned villa, drawing on nuclear power, still emits less carbon than a frugal German drawing from a coal-fired grid. Grid management beats self-flagellation... 'I’ve been scarred mentally and physically from sweating bedridden after a C-section in a German hospital without AC during a heat wave. And I was extremely fit and strong. I can’t even imagine what it’s like for the truly sick and disabled this entire week. It’s torture. And it’s crazy that the people supposedly in charge of the vulnerable are the ones most opposed to A/C for ideological reasons.'
The harder task for Europeans is the mental switch: to stop treating energy as something to atone for. Energy is the master resource, the thing that buys us nearly every other good. The whole of human history is the story of harnessing ever more energy to improve our lives and to hold the lethal forces of nature at bay. To despise energy is to bite the hand that feeds you. Which brings me to one last trivia question: which continent suffers the most cold-related deaths? It’s neither Europe nor North America, but Africa. Prosperity is what allows us to adapt—to heat and cold alike—and adaptation is what stands between us and an inhospitable nature."

Make Europe Cool Again - "when it comes to AC access Europeans are not only behind North America, they’re also behind the Asia Pacific, the Middle East, as well as Central and South America. Why does Europe have so little AC? We could start with the fact that Europe has historically enjoyed a mild climate. As such, Europe has no existing “AC culture” and adoption will slowly change as a result of climate change. However, this “natural” explanation of European AC-poverty becomes less convincing if we compare Europe to other cases with a historically mild climate, such as South Korea. As recently as 1993 South Korea had a European-equivalent AC adoption rate of 6%, a “luxury tax” on AC and misinformed cultural beliefs such as “fan death”. Today, it has one of the world’s highest AC adoption rates at 97%. A better explanation is that European policy has strongly disincentivized installed ACs through a variety of national and local regulations. These regulations have not happened by accident, but they come from an ideology that emphasizes energy degrowth as the only viable solution to climate change... France has passed a Climate and Resilience Law (2021) that requires a “Diagnostic de Performance Énergétique (DPE)”, which means all apartments are assessed by how many kWh/m²/year they consume. Based on this, they receive an energy performance certificate that rates homes from A (best) to G (worst). This energy rating comes with severe consequences... Despite having the highest exposure, most heat deaths are not from outdoor workers. A typical heatwave victim in Europe is an older adult with pre-existing health issues, living alone in suboptimal housing... during the COVID-19 pandemic we shut down pretty much all economic life largely to protect the elderly. In comparison, allowing people to own an AC seems like a very small price to pay to protect the elderly... In Europe indoor heating consumes more energy and contributes more to climate change than AC. Yet, Europeans (rightly) don’t treat indoor heating as a luxurious indulgence that should require a strict permit and is by default not included in new buildings, unless you can prove carpets and ski jackets are not helping enough and that you have a special medical need for warmth. Similarly, AC is increasingly essential for health and well-being. If you want to ban indoor ski slopes in the desert, fine, but we can’t deny people AC when thousands die during heatwaves... As Europeans increasingly suffer from heat in their homes, more and more will eventually buy ACs, and if they can’t have installed ACs, they will buy mobile ACs... This is part of the irony. De facto banning installed ACs forces more and more people to choose less energy efficient alternatives. To maximize energy efficiency you should go in the opposite direction and promote scale through district cooling where chilled water from central plants is provided to multiple buildings... an individual living in France consuming 116’000 kwH (50% more energy than the average American) still has lower carbon emissions than an individual living the 2000 watt society lifestyle (17’520 kWH per year) in Germany... If you are concerned about the impacts of climate change, you should care about heatwave deaths. According to the European Environment Agency 94% of all fatalities from climate-related disasters in Europe from 1980 to 2023 have been due to heatwaves. However, as the old saying goes: There are no natural disasters, only natural hazards. We know how to prevent many if not most of these deaths. AC will not solve everything on its own, but it is a key tool for climate adaptation, especially during heatwaves."
Clearly, the solution is to ban mobile air conditioners

Greg Lukianoff on X - "Dear Europe (yes, even you, Glasgow!): a couple of points. Your aversion to air conditioning is moralistic, not scientific. Heating homes across Europe takes VASTLY more energy than cooling them. Not a little more. Orders of magnitude more. Depending on how you count it, home heating can swallow something like a hundred times the energy used for cooling. Globally, the same basic point holds: heating is the much bigger energy burden. Cooling matters, and it will matter more as the planet warms. But pretending AC is the great sin while everyone blasts heat all winter is just silly. I’ve watched the anti-AC theater in my mother’s home country, the UK, and it has all the earmarks of a devotional self-flagellation ritual: less environmental science than a belief in the nobility of suffering. Also: heat pumps exist. They cool your home in the summer and heat it in the winter, using far less energy than traditional heating."
Iain Murray on X - "One of the many ironies is that the government is insisting on heat pumps being installed, but also insisting that the cooling function is disabled."

Air conditioning must be REMOVED from homes say councils in Net Zero crackdown despite 40C heat - "Britons have been ordered to remove air conditioning from their homes - despite the country baking in up to 40C heat this week - under a fresh Net Zero crackdown. Planning officials at councils have told residents to take down their cooling units over concerns about carbon dioxide emissions. They say AC, despite the heat, should serve only as a "last resort". The crackdown comes from building regulations which demand "active cooling" is used only after all "passive cooling" methods, like opening windows or running fans, have been exhausted. The Tories have accused the Government of leaving Britain "in the dark ages" through Net Zero policies which prevent citizens from accessing "modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries". Standard guidance says planning consent is not needed for air conditioning in most circumstances. But permission becomes mandatory in specific scenarios, including properties in conservation areas - with separate regulations applying to flats, leasehold properties, and shared buildings. This creates situations where units are fitted believing they comply with rules, only for council enforcement teams to turn up and demand their removal. One Londoner received orders to "permanently remove" two cooling units from the rear of their property, The Telegraph revealed. Camden Council's planning inspectors determined there was "no justification" for the equipment, ruling it breached the authority's "cooling hierarchy" policy. During an appeal, the homeowner was advised to open windows and balcony doors in their first-floor flat to achieve ventilation "by natural means". When the resident raised security concerns in the crime-addled capital, inspectors dismissed these, arguing the risk was not "as great as those associated with ground floor windows" and suggesting windows could remain closed overnight. Camden inspectors specifically noted "the absence of ceiling fans" in the property, though this was never a stated requirement. Even after determining the units were "neither intrusive nor harmful" to the neighbourhood's character, officials still demanded they were scrapped. The homeowner ultimately won on appeal to the Planning Inspectorate by proving their property already featured environmental improvements like solar panels. Londoners are at greater risk of enforcement action. The capital's borough councils have incorporated rules derived from Sir Sadiq Khan's "London Plan" into their local planning frameworks. The Mayor's 2021 strategy notes that "new development in London should also be designed to avoid the need for energy intensive air conditioning systems as much as possible". Camden's local plan pledges to actively "discourage the use of air conditioning" over concerns it raises "demand for energy" and warms "the local micro-climate". Islington Council also restricts cooling systems on environmental grounds, saying they "must only be considered as a last resort". These local policies go above and beyond national building regulations, which merely prioritise "passive cooling" measures like window shading before AC. Shadow Energy Secretary Claire Coutinho said: "It is totally bonkers for council bureaucrats to block people from installing air conditioning because it uses too much energy. "This is exactly why we must repeal the mad building regulations that force councils to care more about box-ticking and process than letting people keep their homes cool in the summer. "We have to get out of this miserabilist Net Zero mindset which says that Britain alone has to stay stuck in the dark ages and can't enjoy the modern conveniences that are completely normal in other countries." Estimates indicate roughly three per cent of British homes have air conditioning, compared with 90 per cent in America. The Climate Change Committee has acknowledged the need for cooling systems in care homes, schools and hospitals as temperatures increase, appearing to contradict official Government policy. Labour failed to amend building regulations last week, saying they reflected "the Government's commitment to improving energy efficiency". A Government spokesman said: "Air conditioning units are not banned. They can be installed in both existing and new homes and we expect councils to take a common-sense approach to the rules around this, which are there to manage the interests of communities and the environment.” A Camden Council spokesman said: “Residents seeking planning permission need to demonstrate that alternative, more climate-friendly measures are not suitable, and that units will not create noise or other harmful impacts on neighbours. “Enforcement action in these cases is rare and used only as a last resort where this guidance has not been followed.” Meanwhile, a spokesman for the London Mayor said the policies kept “keep homes cooler without relying on energy-intensive solutions”. They added: "Local planning decisions are the responsibility of the boroughs, who have their own policies in place”."
The cruelty is the point

Ben Habib on X - "They cannot fix the roads. They cannot police the streets. They cannot stop the boats. But they can tell you to rip air conditioning out of your own home during the summer because it offends the net zero cult."
Human rights mean they cannot police the street or stop the boats. Human rights also mean they can force you to die of heatstroke

The Sales Bull 🎯 Follow if you sell B2C or B2B on X - "The British state gets away with so much because if you describe the the truth people think you’re mad"
See also "The Democrats' Insanity Defense"

Air conditioning: saving lives and accelerating net-zero - "Britain is getting hotter, but is poorly prepared for the heat. Only 5% of British households have air conditioning, compared to 37% of people worldwide. Half of all UK homes overheat during the summer months. Heat-related death rates in the UK in 2022 were over 10 times those in Sweden, and twice that of the (climatically-similar) Netherlands. London's rate of heat related deaths exceeded any other northern European capital city, and were similar to those in Rome. High temperatures are not only uncomfortable; they cost lives. In 2022, circa 3000 people in Britain died from heatwaves. Studies show air conditioning can cut heat related deaths by 75%. Heat related illness disproportionately affects the elderly and those with disabilities. High temperatures make workers less productive and students perform worse in exams during heatwaves. Despite these costs, government heat pump upgrade schemes exclude air-to-air devices whilst building regulations decree that air conditioning is only used when other measures are insufficient. This effectively bans air conditioning in new build homes. Similar restrictions are baked into London’s planning policies. Our analysis shows that UK electricity demand peaks in the winter months, and will continue to do so as heating is electrified. Adding air conditioning demand makes use of this spare grid capacity in summer. Air conditioning can help balance the grid and support the green transition, since its demand profile is well aligned with solar generation. Adoption is likely to increase solar energy demand and help speed up clean power. It may also help speed up clean heating adoption by giving homeowners a reason to upgrade. The impact of the modern British summer – on our health, welfare and productivity – is not inevitable, but the result of policy choices. This Government has the opportunity to make Britain a greener, healthier, and cooler place to work and thrive."

Polymarket on X - "JUST IN: German public broadcaster begins “anti-AC campaign” warning of the dangers of air conditioning, as record heat wave hits the region."

Meme - NIFFTYCAT: "Someone needs to step in"
"HVAC HERO FILMS PRESENTS: CITIZEN VIGILANTE 2: CHILL ARMADA *Armie Hammer with air conditioning unit*"

Auron MacIntyre on X - "The fact that the entirety of Europe is willing to sacrifice a notable amount of their population to a Covid-esque purity spiral is a pretty good indication that no lessons were or will be learned"
Covid and air conditioning hysterias are not about saving lives but pushing left wing ideology

Cruadin on X - "It's becoming increasingly apparent that most European electrical grids can't support a 21st Century civilization, complete with modern wonders like ... (*checks notes*) indoor climate control. Instead of simply conceding their glaring governmental malfeasance they've cobbled together a religious belief system to explain why their restive populations must continue to suffer."

Ruxandra Teslo 🧬 on X - "Here, Patrick explains with common sense & compelling examples that Europe has a degrowth/anti air-con mentality and is told that "these are just anecdotes". This is a type of argument often employed by so-called "moderates" that has done much damage in the past decades. Basically, for every talking point, you have a bunch of degrowth/extreme left crazy people that are fairly well-embedded in institutions and "respectable". The polar opposite right-wing/libertarian position is almost never represented in respectable institutions. Then, you have the moderates. They often distinguish themselves by insisting on "statistics" and hard facts and refusing to accept common sense arguments and "what is before their eyes". The "just anecdotes" dismissal treats empirical observations as epistemically worthless unless accompanied by a regression table. But quantitative evidence itself is abundant for things that powerful intellectual institutions want to measure. It is scarce for things they would prefer not to examine too closely. The intellectual landscape ends up looking roughly like this:
1) On one side, there is a well-funded, institutionally embedded, socially respectable body of opinion that is broadly degrowth, skeptical of markets, skeptical of air conditioning etc. These views appear in EU policy documents, in academic journals, in mainstream journalism and in NGO reports. They might not be held by most academics broadly construed (e.g. engineering profs), but they are held by the small minority that studies these topics and that is enough.
2) On the other side, the full-throated pro-growth, pro-energy and pro-development counterargument exists but is largely confined to think tanks that are routinely described as "industry-funded" or "right-wing," which in respectable discourse functions as a full rebuttal. In the middle sit the moderates, who pride themselves on not taking sides, on demanding evidence, on resisting "populist" or "anecdotal" reasoning. This moderate position is not symmetric in its effects and moderates do not apply equal skepticism to both sides. Overall, the lack of actually balanced perspectives leads to the polarization of those who are more right leaning and suspect something is amiss. But because they lack any institutional home, they end up becoming cranky and conspiratorial. End result: broad erosion of public dicourse. Also if you wonder why AC has become a right wing shaped topic, it's also because of the craziness of the discourse, caused by the above."
Richard Hanania on X - "The best reason to be pessimistic among Europe is that degrowthers actually have power. America has crazy people. But they actually try to argue that wokeness or socialism or MAGA will make people wealthier. In Europe, you can just be pro-poverty. That's insane."
Left wingers always dismiss examples that challenge their worldview as "anecdotes", and love ones that support it as "proof". You can see that with climate change in general too

Kangmin Lee | 이강민 on X - "Japan, USA, and South Korea dominate the world when it comes to air conditioning. Air conditioning is right-wing because civilization is right-wing"
Mr. Ovis🐑💼(Office Worker Sheeptuber) on X - "The reason why the EU is having this whole debate and calling AC right-wing is because the arguments in favor of AC are pro-freedom and pro-human. The arguments against are pro-collective and anti-human. For instance, an American says "Well, you should just be able to go get an AC if you want one, you'll be comfortable" The rebuttal to this from the EU is a grand sweeping "Well, we shouldn't need AC at all, we need to terraform the entire planet by paying all of our money in taxes!""

France blames US for deadly heatwave - "Unlike the US, where air conditioning is common, in France only one in four households has air conditioning. Historically, the French have been sceptical about air conditioning: an Ipsos survey published earlier this month found that 78 per cent of French people believe that it’s bad for the environment and one in six respondents said they would rather suffer for the sake of the planet."
Tablesalt 🇨🇦🇺🇸 on X - ""Dear American social media 'influencers': for days, you have been making fun of Paris because the city does not have A/C in every room..." -Audrey Pulvar, the city's deputy mayor Yeah, we have because your garbage ideas are killing people and they need help."
Weird how they don't blame China

Neighbours turn on each other in Portofino air-con crackdown | Italy | The Guardian - "Portofino has been part of a regional national park since 1935, and up until a few years ago, the installation of AC units on its pastel-coloured buildings was entirely banned. As summers became hotter, the rules were loosened to allow use of the appliances, so long as the homeowner asked permission and ensured that the units were discreetly placed and did not sully Portofino’s natural beauty. Police have been scouring the narrow streets for unauthorised units poking out over the terraces of the village’s homes. There were reports of 22 illegally installed units spotted on various rooftops and terraces between January and May, and a further 15 since June as temperatures soared... As the intrigue heated up along with the temperature, Corriere della Sera reported a “vendetta” among residents involving tit-for-tat denunciations between neighbours. Some culprits have attempted to hide their AC unit or disguise the appliance by painting it to blend in with the local surroundings. In some cases, people have reportedly accepted an invitation into the home of a neighbour, only to secretly take a photo of a unit that they have then passed on to police."

Housebuilder behind ‘flat-pack’ net zero homes on brink of collapse - "Craig White, its chief executive, told industry publication Inside Housing last year that it had “the proven model to tackle the UK’s housing crisis at low cost and speed”... The business built its pipeline around government-backed affordable housing schemes, but has been caught in a wider slowdown in delivery. The Government is falling short of its ambition to build 1.5 million homes by 2029. To reach its target, it needs to build 300,000 homes per year, but just more than 150,000 a year will be built between now and March 2028, down from 189,000 last year, according to Savills. “The planning system is broken, delays in getting planning permission have got worse and there’s a massive skills shortage in the UK,” said Mr Pear."
Time for more environmental regulations to cripple other builders so they can compete!

Thread by @ZubyMusic on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "The fact that being 'anti-AC' is an actual political position shows you just how stupid large swathes of humanity are. It's essentially a pro-death position. It's as stupid as being against heating in the winter. Choosing to not personally use air conditioning is one thing... But actively opposing it lol? I do believe people used to be more sensible overall."

Meme - max tampers @maxtempers: "In Soviet Britain, there is a "cooling hierarchy" with five tiers that you must demonstrate to your council you have exhausted before you are allowed to install air conditioning; otherwise, it's taken down."
"The cooling hierarchy. 8.109. The cooling hierarchy, set out in the London Plan 2021, provides measures that should be used to manage heat risk in developments. The cooling hierarchy is as follows:
1. reduce the amount of heat entering a building through orientation, shading, high albedo materials, fenestration, insulation and the provision of green infrastructure;
2. minimise internal heat generation through energy efficient design;
3. manage the heat within the building through exposed internal thermal mass and high ceilings;
4. provide passive ventilation;
5. provide mechanical ventilation; and
6. provide active cooling systems."

Meme - Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "air conditioning still produces heat."
Simon Maechling @simon...: "Yes. in exchange for producing cold."
Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "feedback loop much ?"
IWaTaRA: "Not really, the interior electronics would generate significantly less heat than the cold air blasting inside. And the heat ejected outside disipates will away from your thermostat."
Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "hahahahah dude doesn't understand concept of cumulative. typical karen council."
IWaTaRA @pepperjackmack: "If only they're was some sort of cooling period either via a natural low energy state that occurs every day, or some machine that transfers heat away"
Sir Muppet of Smegg @Galac...: "hahahahah dude thinks heat floats off into space at night... clearly never been to lindos in rhodes."
Alex Godofsky on X - "Europeans literally believe that air conditioning doesn't work. their sincerely held belief is that air conditioning is actually a fraud that just creates endlessly more need for air conditioning to deal with the heat it moves outside your house, rendering net cooling impossible."

DaiWW on X - "As a Chinese person, I certainly don't want to see Europeans all installing air conditioners. If all 500+ million people across Europe ran AC and lived the way folks do in China, it would spell real trouble for our planet. Moreover, just as Europeans don't want to see modernization in China's Tibet and Xinjiang, claiming it destroys the culture of local ethnic minorities, we Chinese feel the same way — we don't like seeing modern technologies, such as AC, destroy Europe's primitive way of life. It's an assault on Europe's indigenous culture. We Chinese must speak up for the preservation of European traditions, and never allow modern technology to wipe out Europe's backward but beautiful cultures."

Lance Gooden on X - "Europe wants to blame the United States for its deadly heat wave.
1. Europe refuses AC to "save Earth"
2. The Paris Climate Agreement allows China to keep INCREASING greenhouse gas emissions.
Europe only has themselves to blame."

Pudge (Don’t Trust: Ver-i-fy!) on X - "Hey Europoors. I just got AC installed. In my garage. For my dogs. And I don’t even live in the South. My dogs live better than you do. I care more about my dogs than your govt cares about you." Meme - *Gillette The Best Men Can Be*
Interested White Man: *EUROPOORS*
White Woman walking by: *AIR CONDITIONING*
*Greta Thunberg stopping him*

Anti-AC as Fiscal Consolidation / Air Conditioning for Pigs

I have no idea why either was blocked by iFunny:

The Fat Electrician: "Every day I become slightly more convinced that Europe's disdain for AC is the result of an EU psyop to make old people die off before they put too much strain on the universal healthcare and pension systems."
Degen CPA: "They really think this is what's happening"
*Air conditioner in North America chilling the continent and blowing hot air to bake Europe*

Gael @Kyyles94: "Va dans une maison de pauvre on verra si y'a la Clim dedans"
宏都拉斯大白蝦 @shrimphead83002: "窮人農戶的院子"

Links - 29th June 2026 (2 - Air Conditioning in Europe)

Europe heatwave: Air conditioning creates political divide as France records hottest day - "With temperatures soaring, France is being forced to re-think its longstanding reservations about one possible answer to climate change: air-con. This week debate about la clim (climatisation) has once again burst out, with Marine Le Pen on the populist right urging a mass subsidised roll-out and traditionally hostile Greens conceding that some air-conditioning may now be inevitable. Currently the country has a low take-up, with only 25% of households equipped with an air-con unit. In Spain and Italy the figure is 50%, and in the US and Japan 90%. French hospitals and schools are also only rarely equipped. Thousands of schools have had to shut this week, and medical and nursing staff complain of conditions fast becoming intolerable. But with temperatures nudging 40C - Tuesday was France's hottest day on record - there has been a rush to buy portable air-conditioning appliances, just to let children enjoy a few hours in class, or for suffocating apartment-dwellers to make it through the night. And more and more, it seems, long-standing opponents of air-conditioning - mainly on the environmentalist left - recognise that it is bound to be part of the country's response to global warming. This week the head of the Ecologists party Marine Tondelier broke something of a taboo when she said that air-conditioning would be needed in schools and hospitals. "There are places where we just can't do without it now," she said. Her break with what she called "anti-clim dogma" is significant because until now the Green movement in France has regarded air-conditioning as the worst of solutions to climate change. Far from attacking the root causes of global-warming, activists said, recourse to la clim was merely attenuating the effects of global-warming. And by making those effects more bearable, it distracted from the essential fight against the causes. Not only that, but air-conditioning is often criticised by environmentalists for aggravating climate change... Suspicion of air-conditioning has also infiltrated government policy. New building and renovation norms focus quite naturally on insulation, greenery and hi-tech methods for air-circulation - with the express aim of making air-conditioning unnecessary. A giant new hospital being built in the Brittany city of Nantes for example will have air-conditioning in only half its rooms, provoking the wrath of medical trade unions. "In the environmental context, we should have la clim everywhere," said Olivier Terrien of the CGT union. According to Valerie Pécresse, the conservative president of the Paris regional council, "The state operates under an anti-clim ideology. But air-conditioning has got to be brought into the picture, along with other methods for creating cool." Pécresse, who controls Paris regional transport, hopes to have all buses and trains equipped with aircon by 2032, and she castigates her Socialist predecessor for failing to see its importance. The political right has always been more pro-clim than the left - and none more so than the National Rally (RN) of Marine Le Pen. "
Left wingers just want people to suffer unnecessarily

EU Commission HQ forced to shut down air-conditioning amid heatwave - "Staff working at the Berlaymont building received a text at midday, reading: “BERL — URGENT — Due to extreme weather conditions, forced shut down of air cooling system from floor 1 to 7 for the rest of the day.” The 13-story building is home to Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, her 26 commissioners and about 3,000 staff. Von der Leyen works on the 13th floor, and most of her commissioners’ offices are housed on floors eight or above... The Commission issued guidance for its staff earlier this week, which included avoiding going outside at the hottest times of day, drinking water regularly and starting work earlier. But the advice angered some Commission staff who work in buildings without air-conditioning, including DG AGRI, according to internal communications seen by POLITICO’s Brussels Playbook. “It’s like feudalism,” a Commission official working on a lower level of the Berlaymont, granted anonymity to speak freely, told POLITICO on Friday, referring to the fact that upper floors housing commissioners got to keep their AC on. A second official agreed it was a “disgrace.” A third staffer working on the 8th floor told POLITICO on Friday that even with working AC, the temperature inside was still 25.7 degrees. The heat wave has prompted a renewed discussion about the lack of air-conditioning systems in homes and offices across much of Europe. Only about one-fifth of households on the continent have AC. In Belgium, one-fifth of all trains are without AC, prompting the national rail company to cancel many peak-hour services. The European Parliament has also faced blackouts this week due to energy consumption from cranking up its cooling system."

ApoStructura on X - "In France hospital temperatures are reaching 35°C+ (95°F). You’re literally safer in an office building which are some of the only places in France that install AC. Europe’s irrational obsession against AC is killing people in the places that are supposed to save them."

Fraser Myers on X - "The Net Zero anti-aircon argument (if it has been thought through at all) is essentially that instead of cooling air instantly and cheaply, we need to persuade every government on Earth to abandon economic growth forever in the hope that at some point between the years 2300 and 3000, average temperatures will settle at about half a degree Celsius above 1990s levels"
Chris Carter on X - "Surely anyone pursuing Net Zero will have a surplus of solar electricity to run AC at exactly the same time as it's needed?"
Alex C-J on X - "Until the evenings, where people are still blasting air con in order to sleep but solar isn't generating. Plus, there's often no wind during heat waves. Better to just use nuclear!"

Tony Aubé on X - "After a hellish week in a Paris Airbnb with no AC (100°F outside, 108°F+ inside), I started looking into why the French are so opposed to AC. There's many reasons: bureaucracy, poverty, etc. But the main one is decades of environmental campaigns that convinced people AC is the devil. The result? You can't escape the heat. Most buses, metro lines, and shopping malls have no AC. This Monday, 850 schools are closing because classroom temperatures exceed 104°F. In Nantes, they built a brand-new train station and a hospital without AC for environmental reasons. The station is now partially closed because it's become a "furnace" that endangers travelers. Hospitals are covering windows with emergency foil blankets to protect patients. The French demonize air conditioning because it creates carbon emissions that contribute to climate change. Never mind that France already has one of most carbon-free electricity in the world thanks to nuclear, or that it accounts for less than 1% of global emissions. They also oppose AC because it "just displace the problem" by dumping heat into the street. Never mind that studies suggest even if an entire city were air-conditioned, the increase in outdoor temperature would be at most about 1°F. Instead, people are willing to endure 104°F+ indoors to avoid a marginal increase outdoors. This ideology kills more people than firearms in the United States. Across Europe, between 50,000 and 70,000 people die from heat every year, mostly the elderly and the poor. Compare that to roughly 44,000 Americans killed by firearms. For comparison, despite having a similar population, deserts, and more extreme temperatures, the United States has only about 2,500 heat-related deaths per year thanks to widespread AC. That's what bothers me most. The moralizing posture completely detached from reality. People feel morally superior for "not polluting." They criticize America and its guns while tolerating policies that kills even more people. I share this anecdote because I know it's shocking to Americans. Here, schools or hospitals reaching 104°F would be unnaceptable. The absurdity is immediately obvious to us because we're looking from the outside. We see the gap between moral intentions and real-world consequences. But we're no different. In America, we have dozens of similar issues where we're just as irrational, and we've become blind to them because the solution isn't politically acceptable. How do can we bring back logic and pragmatism in our societies ahead of irrational political ideological ?"

Miss Jo on X - "This is true socialism. In France. École Primaire La Planette is a primary school in Nîmes, a town in southern France. A child recently fainted because of the heat (40 deg). Classes were being taught in corridors to get out of the heat. The parents got together to raise money for five portable air conditioning units. It took them only 3 days to raise the €2,000. They installed the units. Great, you think. Not according to the current municipal team in Nîmes (left-wing coalition led by communist mayor Vincent Bouget). Bouget has told the school to remove the units because “it sets a precedent” and “in some neighbourhoods, parents don’t have the means to act”. Yes, you read that correctly. He is objecting on the grounds that it is unfair to other schools and causes inequality."

Thread by @RnaudBertrand on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It says an awful lot about France - and not in a good way - that there is "political divide" on using air conditioning when temperatures literally exceed those of the Sahara desert, and when France has one of the greenest energy mixes in the world (thanks to nuclear). And it says even more that those who oppose AC are often the same as those who oppose nuclear: the view - presumably - is that you should neither adapt to climate change (AC) nor prevent it (nuclear). Also the same people, incidentally, who oppose pesticides and fertilizers - basically modern farming - and push for all-organic: a prescription that, if universally applied, would literally starve billions of people (and, ironically, would require so much additional farmland it would devastate the world's remaining forests). It's all part of the same logical fallacy, the notion that if something causes a problem, then that thing is the problem. Yes progress and technology caused and continue to cause plenty of environmental issues. And there is indeed something seductive in saying "we've gone too far, let's change tracks, let's head towards a simpler, slower life, we used to be like that." But not only is this just not feasible without causing far greater harm to ourselves, it's also a fundamentally nihilistic and mortiferous ideology. One that rests on a profound discomfort with what's arguably the single most defining feature of humanity: our ability to shape our environment to suit us, to fight our circumstances rather than surrender to them. That's been the case ever since we discovered fire and invented farming. It is, at the end of the day, the transformation of humanity's genius - our need to create and improve our condition - into a vice. They make it sound like a humanistic project but how could it be since the core premise is fear of humans and contempt for our very nature? Conclusion: yes, 100 times yes, use AC. You'd need to be a complete moron to let yourself boil under 43C heat in order to "save the planet." If climate change is to be solved, it will be by getting the ideologues out of the way of the people who actually fix things... And by the way, if you watch this video of North Korea (ignore the ridiculous music and ridiculous framing) you'll notice one thing: all buildings have AC 🤷"
Environmentalism is nihilistic and misanthropic after all. When humans are viewed as a burden on and the primary source of damage to the environment, the ultimate solution is to get rid of humanity

OPINION: The French are right to shun air conditioning - even during heatwaves - "air conditioning is very far from being the only solution to heatwaves. A 40C day in Paris is a very different experience to a 40C day in Nice. Why? Quite simply because Nice was designed for the heat - its old town has narrow streets that remain shady, its squares are planted with trees, there are Italian-style covered streets to provide shade and the older buildings have foot-thick walls and small windows. Paris was not designed for heat, because until recently it didn't get very hot here - but the difference between the Nice and Paris experience shows what a difference city design can make... The city's chief engineer Franck Lirzin has published a fascinating book (Paris face au changement climatique) on the changes that can be made to housing and public space to keep the city liveable, even if temperatures one day hit 50C. Many of these will be complicated and expensive to implement - and will certainly run into challenges from people keen to defend Paris' heritage such as those iconic but horribly energy-inefficient zinc roofs. But the point is that it can be done without air conditioning - and blanket installation of AC will remove any incentive to push ahead with these changes. Heatwaves already disproportionately affect the poor - those in badly-insulated homes, the homeless, those doing tough outdoor work in precarious jobs. Installation of AC for those who can afford it will mean that the well-off will lose the motivation to push for nationwide change... Behaviour will also need to adapt - just as it already has in countries that have always been hot, where people take a siesta during the hottest part of the day and work in the cooler mornings and evenings. This is already the case for outdoor workers in France, where the law now requires employers to make 'reasonable adjustments' to the work schedule so that people are not outdoors during the hottest part of the day. It seems likely that more adjustments will follow. The searing heat at the peak of a heatwave is frightening and climate change is frightening. We are correct to be scared of these things, what we need now is for the fear to push us into action. As the front page of the French newspaper Libération puts it, we must politicise the heatwave"
When left wingers are open that they want to cause misery to push through the left wing agenda. Clearly, Europe letting tens of thousands of old people die of heat will inspire China and India to destroy their economies too to fight climate change
Clearly, it is a good use of public money to implement complicated and expensive changes just because air conditioning is evil. As Richard Dawkins observed, the retreat of Christianity has opened the way to worse

Leonardo Panetta on X - (Translated from Italian) "France. It's hot. People would like air conditioning. Monique Barbut, the environment minister in the Lecornu government, says she's horrified by these requests because no one is thinking about climate change. Her ministry has air conditioning. Surreal debate as seen from the rest of the world."

ShanghaiPanda （ Account deactivation） on X - "The weather is so hot, are your home's air conditioners working at full power?😃 In China, AC is cheap, electricity is also cheap, and some peasants even provide AC for the pigs they raise.❄️🐷"

Richard Hanania on X - "Germans are so anti-human that they don't even have air conditioning in many hospitals, so pregnant women are forced to sweat it out during heat waves in order to protect the environment."

Andrew Hammel on X - "The cardiac unit of the Düsseldorf University Hospital, where people recover from heart surgery, is currently measuring 38°C/ 100.4°F. As you can see, the building is only about 15 years old. And built without central air-conditioning."
Megan McArdle on X - "The fact that Europeans built hospitals without AC is truly mystifying to me. We can argue about whether it's good/necessary in homes, I suppose, but the people in hospitals are the most likely to die of heat stroke!"

Andrew Hammel on X - "So here's a story about the Düsseldorf University Hospital where heart patients are sweltering in 38°/100.4° temperatures right now because this 15-year-old building lacks central A/C. I taught at the law faculty of this university for 15 years. When the law faculty built a new expansion in 2005, I asked whether it would be air-conditioned. They said: "No, because then every building on campus would ask for it". I thought to myself, "Well, that's Europe for you. Crabs in a bucket." Then the university announced plans for this new building, the one you see in the picture, which would be the main university hospital. That was in 2013 or thereabouts. Shortly thereafter, they published the plans and sketches online. No A/C infrastructure visible. At some sort of faculty function, I asked the dean or assistant dean of the medical faculty whether they were going to install central air-conditioning on this building. "It's no problem if lawyers are brain-fuddled because of the heat -- in fact it might be a bonus! -- but surgeons? Patients?" The dean answered: "Well, we asked, but the construction board and city officials said no, because if this new building gets air-conditioning, then all the older buildings on the university campus will demand it." "Even though this is a fucking hospital?" I asked with typical American coarseness. "Yes, even though it's a hospital," responded the dean, staring with chagrin into his beer. And so now dozens of people recovering from open-heart surgery are bathing in their own sweat. Across the country, thousands of people are dying in un-air-conditioned hospitals right now. As in all former heatwaves, there will be institutional pressure at all levels to attribute their deaths to underlying ailments, not the fact that they sweltered for over a week in brutal temperatures."

Marian L Tupy on X - ".@guardian is (unintentionally) funny: "AC is quantifiably bad, but I think it’s also philosophically problematic... When you can buy a personal bubble of coolness and not truly feel the heat, the screaming urgency to tackle the collective issue of a world on fire can recede slightly."
When left wingers proclaim that they want to make people miserable to push the left wing agenda

Ali Utlu on X - Translated from German "If Germany and Belgium had not shut down their nuclear power plants, all of Europe could have run air conditioners at full blast throughout the entire summer and still caused fewer CO₂ emissions than now. The “Greens” are destroying the world and causing tens of thousands of deaths every year."

Noah Smith 🐇🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X - "Europe's crusade against air conditioning is slaughtering elderly Europeans, and is not helping the climate."
Of course, if you were against covid lockdowns you just wanted grandma to die

Europe Leads World in Heat Deaths Despite Fewer Hot Days (aka "How Europe Became the World Champion of Heat Deaths") - "Here is a trivia question: which continent suffers the most heat-related deaths per capita? By a wide margin, the dubious prize goes to… Europe. In the summer of 2022 alone, more than 61,000 Europeans died as a result of the heat. Europe is again crushed by a record-breaking heat wave, and we can safely predict that thousands of people will die this week. In case you feel geographically confused: no, the equator does not run through Brussels. Thanks to its northern latitude, Europe in fact endures fewer heat days than almost any other inhabited region on Earth. How, then, can it hold the record for heat mortality?... Part of the story is of course demographic. Europe has one of the oldest populations in the world, and the elderly are far more vulnerable to high temperatures. But age explains only a sliver of the gap. The United States is greying too, and Japan is older still than both—yet the risk of dying from heat in either country is dramatically lower. The real explanation comes down to two letters Europe stubbornly refuses to learn: A/C. Across the continent, only about a fifth of homes have air conditioning, against nearly 90 percent in the United States and more than 90 percent in Japan... Anyone who doubts the causal link should consult the historical record. The economist Alan Barreca has shown that the risk of death on extremely hot days in the United States fell by roughly 75 percent over the twentieth century—a decline that happened in lockstep with the mass adoption of air conditioning after 1960. In his words: “the adoption of residential air conditioning explains essentially the entire decline in the temperature-mortality relationship.”... Nor does heat affect only the old. For every degree above 25°C (77°F), our cognitive performance declines by around two percent. And if synapses suffer, so does economic activity. At 30°C, office performance drops by almost 9 percent. Lee Kuan Yew, the architect of modern Singapore, was once asked to name the secret of his tropical city-state’s economic miracle. His answer consisted of the same two letters, A/C, which he hailed as one of the signal inventions of history. By keeping the heat outside, Singapore could stay productive all year round... So why does Europe recoil from a technology which the rest of the developed world (and even large parts of the developing world) take for granted? Part of the answer is historical and cultural. Northern Europe in particular, with its cool climate and mild seasonal swings, had little need for cooling until a few decades ago. But that excuse no longer cuts much ice. The deeper cause is an ideological “less is more” sensibility, more potent in Europe than anywhere else, which frames artificial cooling as a decadent indulgence—something for profligate Yankees with oversized SUVs and backyard pools. That this instinct is especially rampant among European progressives is even more puzzling. Leftists of old such as Karl Marx and Sylvia Pankhurst dreamed of universal abundance and denounced the scarcity mindset; they wanted the masses to share in the comforts once reserved for the rich, not to ration them in the name of nature or virtue. Today’s green gospel of restraint quietly inverts that aspiration, with comfort itself becoming suspect. In practice, Europeans of all ages are told to suck it up and sweat it out. France would sooner close its schools in a heat wave than fit them with devices that demonstrably improve concentration and learning. In the Swiss canton of Geneva, installing an air conditioner requires an exceptional permit demonstrating “real need” (such as a doctor’s certificate). During the recent energy crisis, Spain and Italy barred public buildings from cooling below 27°C—hot enough to dull your cognitive powers by 5 percent. In the midst of the current deadly heat wave, my own city of Ghent is officially advising people to “avoid air-conditioners”. The resistance is baked into European regulation. In many countries a conventional air conditioner lowers your building’s energy rating. The result is entirely predictable: owners and landlords decline to install units, or rip out the ones they have. Those left without built-in cooling fall back on drafty, inefficient portables that can scarcely make a dent in the temperature. I own one myself—a wheezing box with a fat hose shoved through a rickety fabric covering the window. It is the thermodynamic equivalent of mopping the floor with the tap running, but that’s simply the direction in which Europe’s regulations have nudged me. The A/C aversion has even penetrated into the commanding heights of European officialdom. In its public guidance on heat, the World Health Organization mentions air conditioning only in passing and conditionally (“Well, if you must use air conditioning…”). In its statement on the 175,000 heat deaths annually in the WHO’s European region, it says nothing about artificial cooling at all. Instead, citizens are advised to draw the curtains and drink enough water, as though it were still 1955. A 200-page WHO report on heat prevention grants air conditioning a single grudging page, immediately followed by two and a half pages about its “drawbacks.” Journalists and academics are little better. One lengthy feature on heat deaths in a Belgian newspaper found room for speculative climate projections about heat days out to 2100, and for half-measures like white roofs and planting trees, but not one mention of the life-saving technology that Lee Kuan Yew celebrated. This is a technophobia that costs lives, as the data scientist Hannah Ritchie observes in her book Not the End of the World. In 2020 and 2021, Western governments spent billions protecting the elderly from COVID death. Why, then, is the same vulnerable group denied a cool room in a heat wave? The reflexive objection—carbon emissions—does not survive contact with the numbers. As wealthy economies decarbonise their electricity grids, they have already begun to decouple growth from emissions. Consider that the average European burns far more carbon to stay warm in winter than to stay cool in summer—yet no politician would dream of capping the winter thermostat at 15°C, or of denouncing central heating as a decadent luxury for the soft. As Leigh Phillips wrote: “Apart from its relatively novelty, A/C is morally no different from clothing and fire.”... Warm Sweater Day: join in and win! - Leiden University The common thread is a lite-version of the degrowth creed: the conviction that energy use is a kind of sin that we should atone for and reduce as much as possible. Until the 1960s, politicians and utilities promised an age of energy “too cheap to meter.” Now Shell, Engie, and EDF buy advertising space to urge customers to consume less of their own product, peddling slogans such as “the cleanest energy is the energy not consumed.” How strange it is for a private company to coach its customers to buy less of what it sells—a commercial squeamishness that makes sense only in the light of the European doctrine of secular penance."

Links - 25th May 2026 (2 - Air Conditioning in Europe)

Fenix Ammunition on X - "You are 8.5X more likely to die in Europe due to their lack of air conditioning than you are to be killed in the United States by someone with a gun. Just let that settle in your brain for a moment."

Britain and Europe need to get serious about air conditioning - "When the late Singaporean premier Lee Kuan Yew was asked for the secret of his nation’s rapid rise from doldrums to dynamism during the second half of the 20th century, he had two answers. First: multi-ethnic tolerance in a diverse society. Second: air conditioning. Lee, who prioritised the installation of air conditioners in government offices when he came to power in 1959, hailed the technology as “one of the signal inventions of history”, and key to increasing the efficiency of Singapore’s civil service. While the precise contribution of air conditioning to the Singaporean miracle is hard to quantify, there is no question that the ability to keep cool in hot climates is enormously valuable. Once indoor temperatures rise above the low-twenties centigrade, or around 75 Fahrenheit, humans start to suffer. Sleep duration and quality fall rapidly when temperatures rise above 23C. Cognitive performance fares similarly, with scores in US high school tests dipping on hot days, and the affected students suffering a lasting impact on their prospects of graduation. The same is true of office workers’ productivity, which peaks at around 21C and rapidly deteriorates as the mercury rises. And that’s all before we get on to mortality, where death rates climb steeply once temperatures hit 30C. The key word here is indoor. All of these bleak outcomes can be avoided if the interiors of homes, schools and offices can be kept at a comfortable temperature even as the sun beats down outside. And while careful building design, passive cooling and other adaptations can offer some protection, once temperatures get high enough, only air conditioning can make a real difference. As a result, with heatwaves rapidly increasing in frequency around the world, the wide US-Europe disparity in air conditioning use is becoming reflected in a startlingly wide disparity in heat-related deaths. Between 2000 and 2019, an average of 83,000 western Europeans lost their lives every year as a result of extreme heat, compared with 20,000 North Americans. Yet despite the rising human toll, air conditioning remains widely frowned upon in the UK and Europe, with consistent and concerted pushback from those who consider the technology an unnecessary extravagance — and one that does more harm than good... But two key parts of the calculus here are changing rapidly. The first is the extent to which air conditioning is necessary. European cities are enduring more intense heat, more frequently and for longer periods than just a decade or two ago... And the second shift is that rising demand for air conditioning now aligns with rapidly rising supply of solar energy... the potential for air-to-air heat pumps to take care of all of a building’s temperature needs without burning gas (these are models that can both cool and heat) means the net impact on emissions could be negative. Far from encouraging this, regulations in countries including the UK and France continue to disincentivise and even restrict these technologies. Meanwhile, others argue against their adoption on the basis that it will widen health and other inequalities. The reverse is true. Unless authorities begin to treat the need for sufficient cooling as seriously as the need for adequate heating, and fulfil their duty to protect the most vulnerable, inequalities will widen as high-income households fork out for their own protection and leave the rest sweating."

As Europe’s Heat Waves Intensify, France Bickers About Air-Conditioning - The New York Times - "Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader in France, declared that she would deploy a “major air-conditioning equipment plan” around the country if her nationalist party eventually came to power. Marine Tondelier, the head of France’s Green party, scoffed at Ms. Le Pen’s idea and, instead, suggested solutions to warming temperatures that included “greening” cities and making buildings more energy efficient. An opinion essay in Le Figaro, a conservative newspaper, defended air-conditioning because “making our fellow citizens sweat limits learning, reduces working hours and clogs up hospitals.” Libération, a left-wing daily, countered such arguments, writing that the technology was “an environmental aberration that must be overcome” because it blows hot air onto streets and guzzles up precious energy. “Is air-conditioning a far-right thing?” one talk show asked provocatively, reflecting how divisive the issue had become... while many derided air-conditioning for years as an unnecessary — and awfully American — amenity, it is now increasingly seen as a necessity to survive scorching summers. Despite rising temperatures, only about half of homes in Italy today have air-conditioning, according to Italy’s national statistics institute. In Spain, real estate data indicates the share is roughly 40 percent. And in France, only an estimated 20 to 25 percent of households are equipped with air-conditioning, according to the country’s Agency for Ecological Transition. In 2023, 62.5 percent of energy consumed by households in the European Union was used to heat homes, versus less than 1 percent to cool them, according to E.U. statistics. Energy costs are also usually higher in Europe than in the United States — where almost 90 percent of homes use some form of air-conditioning. The dense architecture of European cities is ill suited to ungainly air-conditioning units, and in places like Paris, securing the necessary approvals for old or historical apartment buildings can be complex... Despite her modulated tones, the public debate has focused on what air-conditioning represents. Those who see it as an evil, mainly on the left, say it is another example of leaders’ addressing the symptoms of climate change rather than dealing with its underlying causes. They argue that it is an energy-hungry technology that must be deployed sparingly for those who really need it, while society puts in place solutions that do not exacerbate global warming... But to its supporters, mainly on the right, air-conditioning is unfairly vilified by environmentalists. They note that France relies primarily on carbon-neutral nuclear energy to provide electricity used for cooling, and air-conditioning units leak less polluting refrigerating gases than they used to. “There is no reason to cling to ideological dogmatism and oppose concrete solutions,” a group of conservative lawmakers allied with Ms. Le Pen wrote in a bill proposed last month that would make it mandatory to air-condition certain public spaces. And fans of air-conditioning argue that solutions like sun-blocking shutters will get you only so far in the years to come. Much of southern Europe now experiences more than two months each year when daily high temperatures exceed 85 degrees... In many places, the heat is not just longer-lasting but also more intense... Perhaps no one displays that ambivalence better than Christian Meyer, the head of a company near Strasbourg that installs air-conditioning units. Despite having a vested interest in promoting air-conditioning, he was recently quoted in a local newspaper saying that he wasn’t a fan and that he didn’t use it himself. (“The best air-conditioning is a well-insulated house,” he is quoted as saying.) For now, as the arguments continue, the government’s official heat-related advice takes a middle road, of sorts. Air-conditioning is on its list of options to keep a home cool. But the guidelines warn that it is “a solution that should be considered only after all other options have been exhausted.”"
Given their insanity about general climate change virtue signalling, the cope is going to be, even if they accept that Europe refusing AC will do nothing to fight climate change (unlikely unless you pin them down hard, as you can see from the article), that (white) European seniors dying because of a lack of air conditioning will inspire the rest of the world to destroy their economies like Europe to fight climate change

Why Brussels doesn’t hate air conditioning — but Europe still struggles with it - "In a summer when radio failed to deliver a single memorable hit, one subject managed to keep everyone talking: Europe’s troubled relationship with air conditioning. It’s not a new debate. Every few years, as temperatures climb, the transatlantic divide on cooling habits resurfaces. But this year, it grew unusually fierce, straining cultural ties between Europeans and Americans almost as much as Trump’s tariffs or disagreements over Ukraine’s future. Americans, baffled that Europeans can live without constant cooling, defended their beloved AC with the same bitterness Italians judge other cultures' pizza toppings or the French bristle at foreigners mangling ‘la langue française’. The numbers of this divide are stark: nearly 90% of US households have air conditioning, compared with around 20% in Europe, with some countries falling far below that figure. In France, the topic has even entered the political arena, with far-right leader Marine Le Pen calling for a major air conditioning infrastructure plan. Meanwhile, international news outlets like the Financial Times and Wall Street Journal warned that Europe’s slow adoption of cooling technology is already costing lives... Much of the practical regulation on air conditioning comes from member states, though. Spain, Italy, and Greece, for example, limit how cold public buildings can be set in summer, often no lower than 27°C. The aim is to conserve energy, especially during supply crises. Some historic city centres restrict the installation of external AC units for aesthetic reasons. There are environmental concerns, too. Studies show that AC units can raise outdoor temperatures in dense urban areas by several degrees, worsening the so-called “heat island effect.” But these are exceptions, not an explanation for Europe’s overall low uptake. The rest of this story lies in history and culture. Southern Europe built its cities to cope with heat: thick walls, shaded windows, and street layouts designed to maximise airflow. That’s also why white paint dominates the picturesque skylines of Mediterranean places like Santorini in Greece or Vieste in Italy: The bright surfaces reflect sunlight and radiant heat, helping interiors stay cooler. In northern Europe, on the other hand, summers were once mild enough that cooling was rarely needed. Air conditioning, when it appeared in Europe, was seen as a luxury or even a health risk. Many Europeans still believe exposure to cold air can make you sick, and the stereotype persists that AC is for rich people. Then there’s the money issue. European electricity is far pricier than in the US, and the 2022 energy crisis only reinforced the point. Even though prices have since stabilised, the extra expense of running an air conditioner remains prohibitive for many households."
Weird. I thought greedy companies were why energy was expensive and the US is a capitalist hellhole, and renewable energy, which is more prevalent in Europe than in the US, led to cheaper energy

Europe's crusade against air conditioning is insane - "One Pacific island civilization that was determined to absorb foreign technology without letting it change their culture was Japan...  Travel to Japan today, and I guarantee that unless you are staying in a very backwoods rural place, the room where you stay will have an air conditioner... Europe is different. Data sources differ, but nobody puts AC usage in Europe (or the UK) at more than around 20%. This technology, which almost all Japanese people enjoy, is one that most Europeans do without.  You might think Europe is simply too far north to need AC. But latitude is no longer the defense against heat that it used to be, because climate change is stalking the region: With this rise in temperature — and the aging of the European population — has come a rise in preventable death. Estimates of heat-related mortality vary, but the most commonly cited number is 175,000 annually across the entire region. Given that Europe has a population of about 745 million, this is a death rate of about 23.5 per 100,000 people per year. For comparison, the U.S. death rate from firearms is about 13.7 per 100,000. So the death rate from heat in Europe is almost twice the death rate from guns in America. If you think guns are an emergency in the U.S., you should think that heat in Europe is an even bigger emergency. Most of this death is preventable. The technology that prevents it is air conditioning. Barreca et al. (2016) find that heat deaths in America declined by about 75% after 1960, and that “the diffusion of residential air conditioning explains essentially the entire decline in hot day–related fatalities”. Essentially, wherever AC gets rolled out, heat-related death plunges. Taking Barreca’s estimate and applying it to Europe suggests that as many as 100,000 European lives — 0.013% of the population — could be saved every year if the 80% of European households who don’t have AC were to get it. And yet Europe has not done this. The official reason — at least, where one is given — is that AC uses electricity, which contributes to climate change... Green organizations like the World Resources Institute, which have a lot of influence in Europe, consistently recommend far less effective “passive cooling solutions” due to emissions concerns. And European regulations do block AC, by mandating that newly built buildings be carbon-neutral. (This in addition, of course, to good old NIMBYism also blocks AC installation, especially in the UK.)... This is immediately recognizable as the poisonous ideology of degrowth. Degrowth frames climate change as a problem of personal overconsumption and extravagance to be curbed by austere self-restraint and government policy, rather than as a technological problem to be overcome by installing green energy. This is foolish, of course — it leads to human suffering while not doing much to actually curb climate change. But it’s very popular in northern Europe.  The climate-based crusade against AC is a little infuriating, because it probably kills a lot more people than the reduced emissions save. Right now, Europe is responsible for only about 13% of global carbon emissions from fossil fuel use, meaning that the climate impact of installing AC all over the region is pretty minimal. Does anyone think that incredibly tiny margin of emissions reduction is really worth tens of thousands of lives a year? But from reading anecdotes like Hammel’s, I kind of suspect that there’s a second, deeper reason why Europe so far refuses to install AC: protection of traditional culture. The thing about German elites pooh-poohing AC as an unnecessary American extravagance suggests that some Europeans view lack of AC as quintessentially European culture — a tradition by which Europeans can define their own uniqueness vis-a-vis the rest of the world."
Time to mock US gun deaths, which make it a hellhole everyone needs to escape
When you literally kill your own people to virtue signal for climate change

Why Brussels doesn’t hate air conditioning — but Europe still struggles with it - "Spain, Italy, and Greece, for example, limit how cold public buildings can be set in summer, often no lower than 27°C.  The aim is to conserve energy, especially during supply crises.   Some historic city centres restrict the installation of external AC units for aesthetic reasons...   Air conditioning, when it appeared in Europe, was seen as a luxury or even a health risk. Many Europeans still believe exposure to cold air can make you sick, and the stereotype persists that AC is for rich people.   Then there’s the money issue.  European electricity is far pricier than in the US, and the 2022 energy crisis only reinforced the point.  Even though prices have since stabilised, the extra expense of running an air conditioner remains prohibitive for many households."

The New Hot Topic in European Politics Is Air Conditioning - WSJ - "Marine Le Pen, the leader of France’s far-right National Rally party, proposed a major campaign to install air conditioning in schools, hospitals and other institutions. In the U.K., the Conservatives urged London’s Labour Party mayor to eliminate rules that restrict how air conditioning can be included in new housing. In Spain, the far-right Vox party has been highlighting air-conditioning breakdowns to criticize the country’s establishment parties... The prospect of U.S.-style air conditioning sends shivers through some Europeans. In France, media outlets often warn that cooling a room to more than 15 degrees Fahrenheit below the outside temperature can cause something called “thermal shock,” resulting in nausea, loss of consciousness and even respiratory arrest. That would be news to Americans who expect indoor temperatures to be cooled to around 75 degrees even when it is near 100 outside.  Others fear respiratory infections that might result from spending long periods in air-conditioned rooms... French officials want to expand geothermal heating and cooling systems to avoid the need for traditional air conditioning. Such systems circulate water from deep underground, removing heat from buildings into the ground in the summer and putting it back in the winter. The process is much more efficient than normal air conditioning and avoids sending heat into the air. The upfront investment, however, is significant and possibly prohibitive for installation in buildings that are more than a century old and common in Europe’s old-world capitals."
Because the "far right" loves air conditioning, it must be banned to stop "fascism"

Thread by @AndrewHammel1 on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "A thread about the class dynamics of air-conditioning in Europe. I believe attitudes toward air-conditioning are class markers in many European countries. Air-conditioning is seen as prototypically American, and that's important. I have lived in Germany for two decades and have observed the pro-A/C contingent here go from total defeat to now being on the verge of victory. The reason is normies. I remember visiting a local grocery store in my neighborhood just after it installed air-conditioning. This was 2016. You'd see dozens of people enter the store from the hot sticky weather outside and visibly transform, chattering with surprise and pleasure. Of course, people spent 3x as much time and 1.5 times as much money in that store to get relief from sticky heat. After this experience, they realize the only way to achieve truly comfortable temperature *and humidity* on a hot summer day is air-conditioning. They save up €250 and buy a portable "monoblock" unit for their apartment. Loud and inefficient but gets the job done. But these are ordinary middle- and working-class Germans, who are just as pragmatic as people anywhere. The urban haute bourgeoisie -- bureaucrats, public media executives, NGO employees, humanities grads, journalists, professors, lawyers, judges, etc. -- are the holdouts.
First of all, *every one* of these people has a story about visiting the USA and nearly freezing to death in an over air-conditioned store or office. Every. Damn. One. I can predict exactly when they will wheel out this traumatic tale, I just let it unfold naturally. This anecdote conveys two pieces of status-related information. First: "I can afford to travel overseas." Second: "Americans are ignorant and wasteful." To these people, A/C is the ultimate American solution to a problem. Instead of accepting nature as it is, Americans use expensive, wasteful technology to artificially change the environment to fit their fat, lazy lifestyles. They insist on defying and conquering nature, not "cooperating" with her. And they don't care if they cook the planet while they do so. I'd be lying if I said this argument was 100% bogus, there's certainly some truth to it. But the European urban haute bourgeoisie turns it into a rigid ideological aversion to any form of air-conditioning. They wear understated linen clothes, their children play with wooden toys, and they buy organic food and "sustainable" everything. There's certainly no way in hell they're going to put a loud, energy-hogging piece of *American* technology into their quaint high-ceilinged apartment in a 140-year-old building. Which is fine, except for one fact:
These people regard these decisions not just as their personal lifestyle choices, but rather as a *model for all of society*. They regard themselves as a revolutionary vanguard of advanced ecological consciousness which must aid the less enlightened to reduce their carbon footprints. And these people *run German society*. They dominate in public broadcasting and urban planning circles. Just a few weeks ago, on the main evening news show, which is watched by millions, a journalist doing a feature on a heat wave mentioned air-conditioning only to have the studio moderator immediately break in and say "Yes but air-conditioning is a climate-killer" and the remote journalists nodded in agreement, as if this were universally accepted self-evident truth. Which, among the circles *they frequent*, it is. Urban planners and people who create construction codes in Germany are also brigadiers in the anti-A/C jihad. All across Europe and the UK, urban planners and bureaucrats and officials are preparing "heat reduction" plans to cope with increasingly frequent European heatwaves. As often as not, these reports never even mention air-conditioning. They talk about "cooling centers", "misting stations", "cooling vests", sunshades, blinds, louvers, more trees, more parks, complicated evaporation cooling systems, adjusted work rules, etc. But never once do they even mention air-conditioning, even when addressing "vulnerable populations" such as schoolchildren or hospital patients or seniors. It's almost as if these planning bureaucrats take a perverse pride in ignoring the elephant in the room. And the irony is that sustaining all of these complex, inadequate solutions during long heatwaves is more expensive and inefficient than just installing A/C. Which is safer and cheaper: Rounding up all 85 residents of a nursing home and transporting them  to a makeshift "cooling center" where they'll be sprayed with mist in front of fans -- or just putting an air-con unit in each resident's room? The answer is obvious to a pragmatic normie, but is unacceptable to a "sustainability"-obsessed member of the laptop class.
Which is why it's pretty common on sweltering days to hear Germans complain about the "goddamn 'eco-this' 'organic-that' pencil pushers" who continue to force them to sweat for hours in overheated hospitals, classrooms, and offices."

Bjorn Lomborg on X - "Climate hypocrisy. Many Europeans disapprove of keeping cool with air conditioning, because of its climate impact. But most have no problem using 100x more energy on heating to keep warm. Climate change emotion often trumps logic.  As France’s environment minister says: “We need air-conditioning to give vulnerable people some respite. But we mustn’t do it everywhere.”"
Meme - "Climate hypocrisy: Don't use air con - but 100x more on heating is fine? Climate-worried Europeans despise air conditioning to keep cool. But they have little problem using 100x more energy to keep warm
EU home energy use
This causes climate change! 0.6% Space cooling
Not this 62.5% Space heating"
Once again, identity issues (distinguishing themselves from the US) make people do stupid things

I Once Thought Europeans Lived as Well as Americans. Not Anymore. - "European bureaucracy is literally deadly... European governments do a great deal to discourage air-conditioning, whether central AC or window units. You might need a hard-to-get permit to install an AC unit, and in Geneva you have to show a medical need for it. Or in many regions of Europe, the air conditioner might violate heritage preservation laws, or be illegal altogether. In Portofino, Italy, neighbors have been known to turn each other in for having illegal air-conditioning units. The fines can range up to €43,000, though most cases are settled out of court by a removal of the unit. In Britain, even if you can get through the regulations, the cost of energy can be double that in America, so good luck with your bills. By refusing to build out its nuclear and wind power, and moving away from coal, Britain has ended up short of affordable energy, which has penalized its manufacturing and tech sectors as well... “Why is no one talking about Europe’s lack of clothes dryers?” You can find them in about 30 percent of European homes, compared to the estimate of 85 percent for the United States... The question of whether Americans or Europeans have higher living standards has preoccupied me much of my adult life. I went to live in Germany as a student in 1984, and I marveled at how many things were better there than in the United States. The streets were cleaner, crime was much lower, many of the foodstuffs tasted better, and there were so many interesting places to see. I was only half an hour from France (Colmar) and an hour from Basel, Switzerland. A comparable location in the United States is difficult to imagine. I firmly felt that the West German living standard, at that time, was not worse than the American living standard, all things considered. In some important ways it seemed obviously better, ranging from the quality of public goods to the orderliness of everything around me. And it was the first time in my life I ever tasted what I now would call “real bread.” Now, 40 years later, I’ve massively revised my original judgments. I go to Europe at least twice a year, and have been to almost every country there. More and more I look to it for its history—not for its living standards. It is a small thing, but I now can get excellent bread in the United States, and that has been true since the 1990s. That local artisan bakery in Brooklyn will not itself tip the balance, but it reflects the more general truth that one of these societies has been better at innovation than the other. American life has improved a lot more than German life has. When I visit Germany these days, as I have done twice over the last year, it feels to me like a pleasant, well-ordered version of the 1990s—a country preserved in a kind of amber, with good intentions but also loads of complacency. Most of all, in terms of per capita income America has opened up a big and apparently growing lead over West Europe. We typically grow at rates of 2 percent or more, and the major European nations might struggle to grow at 1 percent. The United Kingdom has hardly seen wage or productivity growth since the Great Recession of 2008. We are at the point where Mississippi, the poorest U.S. state by many measures, now has higher per capita income than many of the major West European nations, and is almost on a par with Germany. Those numbers do not capture all features of life quality, including leisure time, but it is hard to see them as good news for the Europeans. The crime rate is still worse in America, but that has fallen a great deal. In New York City, for instance, the murder rate today is about one-sixth of its peak in the 1990s. It’s true: We are not catching up to the quality of Europe’s historical monuments, churches, and art museums. Perhaps we never will. But as our real incomes rise, European vacation becomes cheaper. I am distressed when I see how many American tourists are milling about southern France or Amsterdam, but that too was quite different 40 years ago. Money talks—and that is one reason why today so many French speak good English and in fact are happy to do so. Circa 2025, my subjective judgment is that American living standards are 20 to 30 percent higher than those in Western Europe. That difference is likely to grow. To be sure, we should not put all European countries in the same basket. Norway and Luxembourg are much wealthier, because of oil wealth and finance, respectively. Switzerland stands above its West European peers, perhaps because it is better run, has lower taxes, and the cantons compete against each other to attract population. At the same time, Europe has many poorer parts to the east, most of all in the Balkans, and their living standards fall well below the American poverty line and seem stuck there. Paul Krugman frequently put forward the argument that American and West European living standards are roughly the same, with Americans earning more but working longer hours. But as history unfolds, that view seems increasingly untenable. I worry much more about Europe in the longer run... Two of America’s biggest problems are obesity and opioid addiction, with opioid deaths running at about 54,000 a year. Yet both of those problems are getting better... One major advantage of America is likely to increase with time, and that is one of scale. Americans do things big, think big, and have created some of the world’s largest companies, most obviously in the tech sector, where size is often rewarded. You can see this in the stock market valuations of those tech companies, including Nvidia, which at its current $4 trillion or so valuation is worth more than the entire German stock market. Europe shows few if any signs of catching up in this area, or of having a major presence in the commercial spaces for artificial intelligence. If anything, EU regulations go out of their way to prevent Europe from excelling at tech... The brain drain from Europe (and other regions) to the United States seems to be accelerating in the areas of tech and AI, most of all for young people. If you want to do a big, successful start-up, you probably should move to America. End of story. America has major and growing companies in these areas, full of foreigners, and Europe does not... “Europeans switch jobs much less frequently, and restructuring is much rarer.”... Population aging and low birth rates are another problem that will make it harder for Europe to catch up... many of Europe’s immigrants are from quite different non-Western cultures. Furthermore, Europe is not always drawing in the top achievers from those cultures, whereas in America, Indian and Pakistani immigrants are quite successful, phenomenally successful in the case of the Indians ($156,000 median household income in America, and $108,000 for Pakistani Americans)... [tourists] will increasingly see Europe as a storehouse of history"

Thread by @SarahTheHaider on Thread Reader App – Thread Reader App - "It’s really shocking visiting the UK. I don’t know what I expected but what I found is what could be at best described as a developing country. London has a few pretty blocks, and the rest is literally disintegrating. Trash everywhere, tube was unbearable (due primarily to the body odor from the other riders).  And yet, eating out wasn’t cheap, and neither were the hotels. Avoid. “So, is Britain poorer than Mississippi? The answer appears to be yes, and it’s yes for many other European countries as well.”"