Air conditioning is the EU’s freedom test

The mercury tops 40C for days on end. So what do you do? Actually, that’s a trick question. I don’t really care what you do – and you shouldn’t care what I do, either. My body, my choice. It’s amazing how quickly that principle becomes negotiable when a liberticidal agenda of mass conformity and control is afoot.

Personally, it’s simple. When France turns into a blazing inferno, as it has multiple times in the past two decades that I’ve been here, I just fire up my portable air conditioners. End of story. No philosophical symposium required. I couldn’t care less what everyone else around here is doing, and I don’t require their moral endorsement to remain conscious through August.

And I certainly don’t turn on the TV to see what the French government is going to do to fix the situation. Because their idea of doing something about it mostly consists of badmouthing air conditioning and trying to ideologically mindbend people about their lack of need for it. Their logic being that resisting this modern tool that has saved countless lives will actually ensure that the Earth is kept cooler in the long run than if everyone was running A/C on decarbonized French nuclear power. Right – because that’s worked out well for them so far. “We’re not banning A/C. We’re making sure future summers need it less,” the French Foreign Affairs ministry wrote on social media in response to a critic. In other words, you’re free to not have it, and we’ll crush you into making that choice permanent.

French regulations don’t need to ban A/C when they penalize and massively financially disincentivize the installation of it in everything from private homes to commercial buildings, citing aesthetic rules regarding their facades. It’s such a European solution. Don’t forbid, just make it prohibitively inconvenient and socially unacceptable. So the French government denying an outright ban is like when they tried to say during the Covid-19 fiasco that the jab wasn’t mandatory, but in reality you couldn’t work, go to the gym, or participate in polite society without it.