Degrees of denial: Paris blames US for climate change in heated exchange

Heatwave has left France counting more than 1,300 deaths in a few weeks (Picture credit: Reuters)

TOI correspondant from Washington: Welcome to Planet Barbecue, where the latest transatlantic spat between the US and Europe comes via Paris – with heat – courtesy the city’s deputy mayor Audrey Pulvar, who is blaming Americans, and their enthusiastic love affair with air conditioning, for helping cook France.Amid much snickering in America about France's sparse air conditioning during 43C temperatures this week, Pulvar fired back that the US, the world's largest per capita greenhouse gas emitter, which has spent decades treating atmosphere like an all-you-can-eat carbon buffet, bears considerable responsibility for the warming that has left France counting more than 1,300 deaths in a few weeks.“Dear American journalists and social media ‘influencers’: for days, some of you have been criticizing and making fun of Paris because the city does not have A/C in every room…OMG, this is so rich! ...Your

cities, which are 90 per cent air conditioned, are not unrelated to this …So please, enough with the lecture. Just start doing your part,” Pulvar wrote on social media.France has long-been resistant to air conditioning, with only 25% of households in the country equipped with such cooling units compared to 90 percent in America – a stat the US wears with pride. “The reality is that no amount of French sweltering in the heat will make a real dent in the global climate.

The politicians in Paris might have a cultural resistance to air conditioning, but as the mercury rises, European voters might soon decide that cooling off is better than green self-righteousness,” sneered the WSJ, coming to America’s heated defense.But while France and much of Western Europe is melting like cheese left on a dashboard, the US itself is preparing to celebrate the Fourth of July by shooting record-breaking fireworks into an atmosphere that's already becoming a convection oven.Temperatures are expected to top 40C over the weekend (which feels like 45C because of thinner ozone layer and lower humidity), roasting half the country under another oppressive heat dome.While American conservatives say Pulvar may have overcooked her case by blaming America's addiction to air conditioning, progressives acknowledge the inconvenient part: the atmosphere doesn't care about ideology or political beliefs.

Carbon dioxide has never once stopped at the border to have its passport and visa checked.On the larger point – that emissions are turning Earth into a slow cooker – experts concede Pulvar has considerably more science on her side than the man who wears heavy dark suits and an extra-long tie in peak summer and who treats climate change like an optional belief system.Donald Trump, by most accounts, looks at climate science the way toddlers view vegetables: if you don't like it, pretend it doesn't exist.

He has called climate change a hoax, mocked concerns about warming during winter cold fronts, and joked that rising seas simply mean "more oceanfront property." That, critics say, is like watching your kitchen burn down and announcing you've solved the lighting problem.The US itself has been here before – Chicago's infamous 1995 heatwave claimed more than 700 lives and the Pacific Northwest's astonishing 2021 heat dome killed hundreds.

Last July, temperatures at Reagan National Airport just outside Washington DC touched 104F (40C) degrees, matching a record set decades earlier, one expected to be toast this weekend, endangering even World Cup football games.And what is Washington doing about all this? Exactly what Washington always does – shuffling around fully dressed in dark wool suits and neckties.Only in the US capital could thousands of highly educated adults collectively decide that the proper attire for triple-digit temperatures is the wardrobe of a Victorian undertaker.

Cabinet members visiting India in peak summer, perspiring with patriotic determination, have adopted the same dress code, as though wool somehow intimidates the sun.The irony in the Paris-Washington spat is that air conditioning itself has become less a luxury than a survival tool in many parts of the world. The challenge, reasonable climate experts say, is not whether to use it, but how to power it without further stoking the furnace.Cleaner electricity, greener cities, better insulation and smarter buildings will accomplish infinitely more than trading snarky, heated posts across the Atlantic because nature always gets the final punchline. After all, on Planet Barbecue, it doesn't matter who started the fire once everyone is on the menu.