Euro ruling elites need scapegoats for their incompetence and malfeasance, and we’re it

Paul Driessen

Happy July Fourth and America 250!

We have much to celebrate, beginning with our Constitutional rights, equality and liberties and the prosperity they have bestowed. Indeed, living in this incredible, diverse, energized country, during this time in history, with our modern transportation, communication, healthcare and AIR CONDITIONING technologies, is a true blessing.

We can also be thankful if we aren’t in Europe this summer, with its 40˚C (104˚F) heat wave – and virtually no air conditioning.

Europe certainly could have AC. Willis Carrier invented it in 1902. Air conditioning was common in American homes by the 1960s, and today 90% of all US households and businesses use it to stay cool, reduce humidity, protect equipment and products, work productively … and literally save lives.  

But Europe has chosen not to. Actually, its ruling elites have chosen not to allow families and businesses to install AC systems or afford the electricity to operate them. They want to be global leaders in stopping “manmade” warming and climate change – and ensuring the “inevitable” transition from fossil fuel and nuclear power to unpredictable, unreliable, unaffordable wind, solar and unreliable backup electricity.

Heat waves typically mean little to no wind, and thus no wind power. Clouds and sunsets mean little to no solar power, while high daytime heat means panels become less efficient or even catch fire.

Your ancestors got along fine without AC, the elites tell their subjects. So can you. You’re hot? Open a window and let that balmy 104˚ air flow into your home and workplace.

Europe had some 1,300 excess deaths so far this summer due to the heat, and 2,300 last summer. But it’s not our fault you’re sweltering and dying, its politicians say.

“As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gases in the world,” the United States bears “a significant responsibility for global warming and the consequences we in France are experiencing,” Paris Deputy Mayor Audrey Pulvar insists. And much of that is due to Americans’ obsession with air conditioning.

At least France cares about saving the planet, its pols say. We’re even sacrificing people, kind of like Mayans dropping virgins into cenotes, petitioning their climate gods to end a decades-long drought.

At least the USA is only the second worst culprit – after China, which emits 29% of total global carbon dioxide, and where 60% of households have air conditioning, compared to 10% in Europe. In Japan 91% of homes have air conditioning, 86% in Korea and 16% in Mexico. Their alleged contributions to the Euro heatwave are apparently irrelevant.

More than 80% of French citizens (including 78% of Green Party militants!) want air conditioning in residences, schools, hospitals, and public trains and buses. But their political betters view this as sacrilege, as do those in Britain and Germany.

France’s Ecological Transition Ministry avers that AC may be necessary for those who are elderly, chronically ill or pregnant. Other people, however, should eat cold soups, wear hats, wet their faces, turn off computers, and put cardboard over sunny windows. Those other people don’t include ruling classes, however.

Under Europe’s 2-tier climate justice system, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen directed her building manager to turn the AC off on floors 1-7 … but keep offices comfortably cool on floors 8-13, where she and her commissioners work diligently to stave off climate change, keep GMO foods out of EU grocery stores, and otherwise control people’s lives.

The real cause of Europe’s 2026 Summer in Hades is an enormous mid-troposphere high-pressure ridge (an “omega block” in the jet stream) that’s transporting hot Sahara Desert air northward into western Europe. The phenomenon happens during many summers to varying “degrees” and has nothing to do with climate change, natural or manmade.

In fact, many of Europe’s all-time national heat records were set long before modern CO2 concentrations reached 0.0432% (432 ppm): Ireland (1887), Bulgaria (1916), Poland (1921), Sweden (1947), Romania (1951), Norway (1970), Greece (1977).

(In the United States, thirteen of 50 state high temperature records were set in the 1930s and have never been broken. Every state has hit at least 100°F, including Alaska: 100˚F in 1915.)

I grew up nine miles from Wisconsin’s Hearthstone House, the first home in the world lit by electricity (in 1882). My father was born and died in my boyhood home, which was built in 1880 and had electricity not long after Kaukauna (the “Electric City”) built the state’s first municipal hydroelectric plant in 1885.

Air conditioning through my high school years and beyond consisted of an old furnace blower that Dad set up inside our front screen door, to supposedly cool us off by pulling air through the first floor. But my brothers and I sweated bullets all summer long in our sunbaked southwest corner brick-faced bedroom.

My parents finally installed central air conditioning in 1981. “This is wonderful,” he remarked. “I should have done this years ago.”

I certainly agree. Thirty years earlier would have been nice. But it was my parents’ home, their decision.

That’s completely different from Europe’s politicians and bureaucrats decreeing that poor and working classes will not have air conditioning, will not be able to afford AC if units are already installed, and may find government apparatchiks ripping units out if they try to use them.

Europe is undergoing moral and cultural decline – and an accompanying rise in rapes, murders and other crimes – due to “progressive” policies that eliminate borders, allow unfettered, unvetted immigration, and put criminals right back on the streets … or never arrest, prosecute or jail them in the first place.

It’s also suffering economic and healthcare decay, as climate-centric policies eliminate oil and natural gas production, send prices through the roof for “renewable” electricity that will often not be there when families, schools, hospitals and factories need it – and send industries and jobs to foreign shores.

Some decry this as Europe’s suicide. A more accurate term might be civilizational manslaughter, by ruling classes – and those who gave them too much power … and too little common sense and too much disdain for less well-off people they pledged to serve and protect.

There is growing concern that the United States could be heading down a similar primrose path, led by young voters, teachers and professors who fill them with anti-America, anti-free-market claptrap, and socialist-communist-Islamist mayors, governors, politicians and candidates who increasingly control the Democrat Party.

President Trump has helped control these pressures. But he too often gets insufficient congressional support for energy, election and immigration policies, and will soon be another former president.

The coming mid-term elections could prove pivotal, and the 2028 election monumental. America’s patriots need to work like their Revolutionary forebears, not just hope for the best.

Let us all strive and pray for continued responsible energy policies and a renewed and more perfect union for our great nation.

Paul Driessen is senior policy advisor for the Committee For A Constructive Tomorrow (www.CFACT.org) and author of books, reports and articles on energy, environmental, climate and human rights issues.