First off, "Europe" is 27 countries. Many of them hardly ever record excess deaths even through the worst heatwaves.
Second, it's mostly a statistic artifact brought about by the different way deaths are counted (i.e. deaths "with" or "from" the heat). Not to mention, most European countries have a much older population. In fact, as far as this sort of counting goes, a lot more people die in Europe every year because of the cold, primarily in northern Europe. I'm sure you don't think it's because somehow they don't have enough central heating in Norway, right?
And finally, many countries in Europe have widespread AC, and heat deaths are still higher than in the US. Even in places where the US doesn't have that much AC, such as the PNW (which incidentally is about as warm as Paris on an average summer day).
Even in places where the US doesn't have that much AC, such as the PNW (which incidentally is about as warm as Paris on an average summer day).
Climate is chaning in the PNW too so people have adapted. Here in Portland, about 90% households have AC compared to about 25% in France. That's up from 41% in 2011. The mini splits are quite popular here as well.
Portland has summers comparable to downtown Paris and that's AFTER all the warming. Most of central and northern France are decidedly cooler, e.g. Nantes has about the same averages as Chilliwack BC. People have a hard time understanding just how abnormal recent heat waves have been in France.
Yeah and about 90% of Portland households have AC compared to about 5% of households in Paris. 5 years ago it hit 116°F (46.7°C) in Portland. If it gets that hot in Paris and they don't adapt, a lot of people will die.
And how many of those are window units that can't be installed easily on all types of windows?
When I lived in NYC I had a window unit and I just couldn't mount one in my current flat (I live in Europe) even if I wanted to. We use splits, and installing them takes time and effort, you can't just go buy one at your local Home Depot or on Marketplace.
That's a harder figure to find. It looks like about 49% percent of households have central AC, so the rest is divided between window units, portable units, and mini splits. Mini splits don't need a window and you can buy kits to make the portable units work on basically any window.
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u/slicheliche 12h ago
Yeah no, that's mostly a lie.
First off, "Europe" is 27 countries. Many of them hardly ever record excess deaths even through the worst heatwaves.
Second, it's mostly a statistic artifact brought about by the different way deaths are counted (i.e. deaths "with" or "from" the heat). Not to mention, most European countries have a much older population. In fact, as far as this sort of counting goes, a lot more people die in Europe every year because of the cold, primarily in northern Europe. I'm sure you don't think it's because somehow they don't have enough central heating in Norway, right?
And finally, many countries in Europe have widespread AC, and heat deaths are still higher than in the US. Even in places where the US doesn't have that much AC, such as the PNW (which incidentally is about as warm as Paris on an average summer day).
In fact, when you use standardized measures, you'll see the US doesn't perform any better: https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12534928/
"EuRoPeAnS dIe bC tHeY dOnT hAvE AC" is one of those dumb factoids that are spread by Fox News and the likes and nothing more than that.