France’s record-breaking heat wave triggers a reckoning on AC

PARIS (CN) — France’s record-breaking heat wave is forcing national soul-searching on air conditioning as the country confronts an uncomfortable reality — 100 F days will likely get even hotter, hot spells will be longer, and environmental concerns are becoming a weaker argument than public safety.

“What’s happening now is likely to change the game, and quite a few people are going to start asking themselves the question,” Nicolas Viovy, a researcher at the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences known as LSCE, said. “I, for example, am asking it.”

Although brief heat waves are typical in summer, they usually happen in August. But this is already the second episode this year. Friday marks France’s 9th consecutive day with temperatures that have topped 104 F in Paris, and even higher in other parts of the country.

The consequences are far worse than discomfort. In France, at least 40 people have drowned during the heat wave since June 18, often seeking relief in rivers with dangerous currents. In neighboring Spain, a monitoring system at the Health Institute of Carlos III estimates that 212 deaths could be linked to sweltering temperatures.

Moissa Tandigora, a 36-year-old shopkeeper in the 11th district of Paris, was standing behind the register on Friday with a rotating desk fan blowing toward him. He said this year has been a wakeup call, and thinks everyone — especially elderly people — need air conditioning.

“This year is the worst, it’s the hottest; even August of last year and the year before weren’t like this,” he said. “For the people of my generation, I think it’s the first time we’ve seen anything like this.”

Tuesday was the country’s hottest day on record since 1947, a record quickly broken Wednesday when temperatures hit 110.8 F. To put this in perspective, Florida has not exceeded 109 F since 1931, according to an X post by AccuWeather.

The episode seems to be shifting public opinion. In the Climate and Public Opinions International Observatory’s 2025 Global Opinion on Climate Change report, researchers found 39% of French households were favorable to the idea of installing air conditioning. In June of this year, a poll conducted by Ipsos revealed that 84% of French people thought air conditioning was an efficient way to cope with heat.

It’s also a hot topic in politics. Although the left has traditionally opposed air conditioning, there is now more pressure to acknowledge an element of necessity or risk looking out of touch. Although the hard-left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon remains headstrong that mass air conditioning would be too detrimental to the environment, the Greens leader Marine Tondelier said that although it was “not necessary a few years ago, it’s becoming so” on the French TV channel BFM on Wednesday.

On the other end of the spectrum, the extreme-right National Rally, known as the RN and spearheaded by Marine Le Pen and her protégée Jordan Bardella, are spinning air conditioning into a full-blown political campaign. The party has vowed to devote 20 billion euros ($22.85 billion) toward widespread installation through zero-interest loans by 2030 if one of its leaders wins the 2027 presidential elections.

“The far-right has given the impression that everything would be solved with air conditioning, and the left sometimes remains a bit locked into arguments that are, in my opinion, obsolete and sometimes ideological,” François Gemenne, a lead author of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s Sixth Assessment Report, said. “I think it is very important to depoliticize this subject and for us to return to a debate that is more pragmatic, more anchored in reality.”

On Thursday, the subject line of the RN’s newsletter on read “Heat wave: Let’s reject Stone Age environmentalism!”

“In most countries facing extreme heat, the issue was resolved long ago,” the text of the newsletter read. “Here, we’re told we should accept suffering, halt activity and — above all — not install air conditioners because they might contribute to slightly warming the outside air.”

Some are skeptical that political promises will ever materialize; a common critique is that French leaders forget about their pledges once temperatures drop.

Marc Hamou, who was working in a cool textile shop in Paris on Friday, is one of these critics.

“I don’t even listen to them, these politicians, these jokers,” he said, sighing. “They just go on TV during heat waves, when there are deaths, but they don’t do anything … . They love to talk.”

Hamou has always been for air conditioning; this heat wave didn’t influence his opinion. But it’s making things more urgent.

“You have to air condition everything so that we don’t’ die and suffocate … . Working in a comfortable environment is better than sweating,” he said. “People who say ‘No, we’re good’ are liars.”

In France, roughly 25% of the population has an air conditioning unit. Gemenne said temperatures used to be milder, and it didn’t seem to be a worthwhile investment.

“The second point is that I think many French people remain convinced that it’s very harmful to the environment, whereas in reality, the environmental impact is actually much more limited than people imagine, because electricity is decarbonized in France,” he said. “Only the phenomenon of local heat rejection remains, but that is a very local problem, which is not a problem for the global climate, contrary to what many people sometimes imagine.”

Vincent Viguié, the deputy director of the International Center for Research on Environment and Development, thinks air conditioning might be necessary, but in the broader context of equipping buildings to deal with higher temperatures.

“When you have a well-insulated building with solar protection on the windows and safeguards against heat entry, air conditioning will consume much less energy, cost much less to operate and have a much lower environmental impact,” he said.

He said the political debate on air conditioning risks diverting attention from the other risks associated with extreme heat, which need to be addressed; particularly droughts that impact agriculture and compromise the integrity of building structures.

“The problem is that the way it’s been brought to the forefront ignores a lot of things,” Viguié said. “That is to say, right now we’re hot, but the consequences of heat waves are not just health related.”

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