With France experiencing record-breaking temperatures this month, I prepare for the daily onslaught of heat in Paris the way I prepare to report in war zones.
Every day, I rise at 5am before the sky lightens and close the shutters and windows of my apartment, which has no air conditioning. This suffocation strategy comes from a Spanish friend: locking the cool night air inside and keeping the scorching air, which can rise to 43°C during the day, outside.
Then I strategically place the three Chinese-made fans I own in the one room – the “cool room” where I will spend the day in a state of heat exhaustion. I make several litres of electrolyte-infused water and store it in the fridge. My last task is to unload my ice cube trays into a plastic bag and freeze more. A friend who arrived at my home dripping with sweat reported that bags of ice are under lock and key in Picard, the famous French store that sells frozen food.
When night falls, I finally open my windows.
This might sound absurd to those living in the Middle East and accustomed to extreme heat, but my hometown of Paris is paralysed by a heatwave. Most establishments, including my gym, do not have air conditioning. Some hospitals have air conditioning in only half their rooms. Restaurants are empty. A large number of schools are closed. Some trains are cancelled.
Reuters recently reported that about three-quarters of Paris rooftops use sheets of zinc as covering, recognised by Unesco as valued cultural heritage – but which is unpleasant to live under. The metal is recyclable and weather-resistant, but it also absorbs and conducts heat. Frankly, it is like being roasted like a chicken inside a tin oven.
Not many people here have air conditioning because we never needed it in the past. In addition, there is a political debate opposing the technology. There are those who believe it is a band-aid that masks the real problem: climate change. Air conditioning requires a lot of electricity to run – and while France is largely powered by nuclear energy, some argue that more air conditioning means more fossil fuels burned. Greenhouse gases also leak.
The issue is larger than the decision of whether to buy an air conditioning unit at the local retail store (try to find one – everything is sold out). The heatwave has been going on since June 17. Purple, a colour that is rarely shown – meaning temperatures are between 40°C and 43°C – is now on the weather map.
“We are in the midst of a historic heatwave,” Benoit Thome, the director of institutional relations at the meteorological service Meteo-France, told Le Monde.
The impact has affected students, healthcare workers and the most vulnerable. Driven largely by climate change, it is a similar situation in 2003, when 80,000 people died from the heat across Europe, including 15,000 in France. Forty-eight people have drowned in France seeking comfort by attempting to swim in cool water.
And yet this heatwave, this misery is not inevitable. It is a choice humanity made going back five decades when political leaders gathered and were told of the consequences.
Former US president Jimmy Carter – an underappreciated leader – was a climate visionary who was mocked for his views. He started studying climate change way back in 1971 and was an early advocate of clean energy. He installed solar panels on the West Wing of the White House in 1979 – which back then was a remarkable thing to do in the age of Disco balls and Saturday Night Fever.
“It can be just a small part of one of the greatest and most exciting adventures ever undertaken by the American people,” Mr Carter said, referring to the use of solar panels. But few listened to him.
His successor, Ronald Reagan, cut the budget for solar research by 85 per cent. He also did away with the tax credit for solar panels and crushed the infant renewable energy industry. Mr Carter’s beloved solar panels came down, and the great environmentalist Bill McKibben described the end of Mr Carter’s dream as the beginning of “the culture war against clean energy” in America.
Had the industrialised world had leaders who followed the path of renewable energy that Mr Carter urged everyone to follow, the world at large could have cut the costs of renewable energy far faster than it did.
Humanity has had fifty years of warnings about climate change, three decades of UN-led reports and international agreements signed in good faith. Yet a number of governments have treated climate action as negotiable rather than necessary. One of the consequences of this neglect is the heatwave suffocating Paris and other cities across Europe today.
The US-based National Public Radio recently reported that more than 200,000 people have died from heat-related causes across the continent over the past four years. Europe is also the world’s fastest-warming continent, with temperatures increasing twice as fast as the global average since the 1980s, according to the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
Catastrophe doesn’t arrive without warning – I know this from how wars begin. There are always signs and warning bells. There are always moments when intervention is possible. Climate change is no different.
There is still time to change course. As people are miserable and sick with the heat, we must project what it will be like in 10 years’ time unless we begin to change. We cannot afford not to.
