Cruel summer: Getting home air-conditioning should not be this hard
Europe’s buildings were designed for a climate that no longer exists. Air-conditioning and other cooling measures are urgently needed to save lives.
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Europe’s biggest adaptation failure is treating extreme heat as an aberration rather than the new normal, says the writer.
PHOTO: REUTERS
“The other day I sat in my car for as long as possible,” my good friend Hugh, who lives in Essex, England, and loathes hot weather, said to me recently.
The severe heatwaves that have scorched swathes of Europe since May have made his life a misery. Hugh, 66, doesn’t have air-conditioning, and his house, built in 2011, is designed for winters.
