PARIS — Marine Le Pen doesn’t want the French to sweat, whether it’s over the rise of the far right or the mercury climbing up their thermometers.
“It is high time that France rolled out a major air-conditioning equipment plan,” the French far-right leader said Monday, as France and the rest of Europe grapple with a major heat wave.
The dangerously warm temperatures, forecast to reach 36 degrees Celsius in Paris and 40 degrees Celsius elsewhere, have prompted the government to issue unprecedented heatwave warnings for 84 departments.
In a post on X, Le Pen struck while the iron — and everything else — was hot, turning the lack of air conditioning into a political issue. She accused the government of forcing ordinary people to suffer the heat while the “so-called French elites” benefit from air conditioning.
“It’s crazy to tell families to stop working from one day to the next because schools can’t take our kids anymore, while telling them to go to the local movie theater, which is air-conditioned,” she said on X.
Frédéric Falcon, a lawmaker from Le Pen’s National Rally, said that his party’s goal was to install air conditioners “as widely as possible, in administrations, schools, retirement homes and private homes.”
“We are way behind Southern Europe, including the South of France,” he said.
While climate change has made Europe the fastest-warming continent on the planet, it has less air conditioning coverage than countries like the United States and Japan.
The French have not traditionally been big fans of air conditioning, but the number of French households installing cooling systems is growing.
The French government has made significant efforts to reduce nationwide electricity consumption since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the ensuing energy crisis, and has increased its investment in nuclear power.
In terms of air conditioning, French authorities have supported supplying strategic buildings and public transport with cooling systems, but are prioritizing other ways of keeping temperatures down that do not emit greenhouse gasses, such as planting more trees, better insulating buildings and developing more innovative options such as the geothermal cooling system supplied to the Olympic Village.
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