A prayer for Europe

Europe is burning this summer at an unprecedented scale. The continent is changing faster than any other due to climate change and is a dire warning for the rest of us of what is to come.

The Right in Europe would have us believe that air conditioning is the answer. Marine Le Pen wants to roll out air conditioning countrywide in France because they don’t have any other answers. Air conditioning is an option for specific issues but when your infrastructure is not built for it, and when your nuclear power plants are shutting down because of high temperatures, AC is like a tiny band aid on a limb that’s just been cut off.

The rest of the world is at risk as well - I don’t want to diminish that point. Europe is the canary in the coal mine though to use a worn-out phrase. The change is more rapid there than anywhere else, their homes and other buildings are not built for hot weather, and frankly they don’t have the infrastructure that countries like the US and Canada have for fire-fighting. Le Pen would be much better off suggesting rational policy on those things vs. “AC for all” but like everywhere else in the world the Right doesn’t have any rational policy to help fix any of this. There is a direct line for the problems the world is experiencing to any policy the Right has put forward.

So I’ll say a prayer for Europe, and the rest of the world, that our leaders will pull their heads out of the sand, pretending the issue doesn’t exist while the world burns. I’ll say another prayer for those responsible for electing these leaders to pull their own heads out of the sand to see that we are all responsible, some (much) more than others, and that current policy, and dumb ideas like “AC for all”, is not going to fix anything.


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