Unsupervised Dad

Serious question. Where do you think her first job will be after graduation?

I don’t understand the whole “AC in Europe” debate. The controversy mostly exists to avoid a much simpler reality: you cannot roll out air conditioning across Europe at the scale and speed needed to solve immediate problems such as the current heatwave. Several factors are at play: • Europe did not used to experience this level of heat. Climate change has changed the picture, and relatively quickly. • Much of Europe’s building stock is old, often centuries old. These buildings were designed to moderate temperature with features such as thick walls and natural ventilation, not to accommodate modern air conditioning systems. • Those historic buildings are a huge asset. Their façades are part of what makes European cities attractive and economically valuable. You cannot simply cover them with external AC units without damaging that heritage. • Even with strong political will, who would pay for a continent-wide retrofit that preserves historic architecture? The cost would run into hundreds of billions of euros. • And even if the money were available, could manufacturers produce the equipment fast enough? Could installers be trained and hired quickly enough? Europe already faces labour shortages in many skilled trades. So where would the workforce come from? More immigration? That would simply create another round of the same xenophobic arguments that already dominate public debate. So that’s the short version: Europe will not have universal air conditioning anytime soon. Much of its building stock was not designed for it, and the necessary resources, money, industrial capacity, supply chains, and labour simply do not exist at the required scale. Air conditioning will spread, and in many places it already is. But it will happen gradually, starting with newer buildings where installation is easier and cheaper, and expanding as investment, production capacity, and skilled labour grow. There may even be an upside. As modern buildings become better adapted to hotter summers, some of the premium currently attached to beautiful old buildings may diminish, making them more affordable. In the meantime, people invent cultural controversies. Americans, in particular, seem unable to resist them. A European heatwave somehow becomes another opportunity for Europe-bashing, social media outrage, and people taking sides in a debate that ignores the practical constraints. It’s much easier to argue about why Europe doesn’t have air conditioning than to explain how you would install it across an entire continent.

toddlers to people with deformities in the grocery store