Climate Vs Comfort
Another quintessentially American sport lands up in France
There has been a history of American thought arriving in France after a time delay.
No sooner was the American Revolution over, the French Revolution began.
Americans adopted air conditioning faster than anywhere in the world. Of course, the air conditioning companies wanted this, but another industry was equally interested in this - electricity companies.
Between 1946 and 1965, 31 million new homes were constructed in the US, and for the people building those houses, air conditioning was a godsend. Architects and construction companies no longer had to worry much about differences in climate – they could sell the same style of home just as easily in New Mexico as in Delaware. The prevailing mentality was that just about any problems caused by hot climates, cheap building materials, shoddy design or poor city planning could be overcome, as the American Institute of Architects wrote in 1973, “by the brute application of more air conditioning”. As Cooper writes, “Architects, builders and bankers accepted air conditioning first, and consumers were faced with a fait accompli that they merely had to ratify.”
Equally essential to the rise of the air conditioner were electric utilities – the companies that operate power plants and sell electricity to consumers. Electric utilities benefit from every new house hooked up to their grid, but throughout the early 20th century they were also looking for ways to get these new customers to use even more electricity in their homes. This process was known as “load building”, after the industry term (load) for the amount of electricity used at any one time. “The cost of electricity was low, which was fine by the utilities. They simply increased demand, and encouraged customers to use more electricity so they could keep expanding and building new power plants,” says Richard Hirsh, a historian of technology at Virginia Tech.
The utilities quickly recognised that air conditioning was a serious load builder. As early as 1935, Commonwealth Edison, the precursor to the modern Con Edison, noted in its end-of-year report that the power demand from air conditioners was growing at 50% a year, and “offered substantial potential for the future”. That same year, Electric Light & Power, an industry trade magazine, reported that utilities in big cities “are now pushing air conditioning. For their own good, all power companies should be very active in this field.”
By the 1950s, that future had arrived. Electric utilities ran print, radio and film adverts promoting air conditioning, as well as offering financing and discount rates to construction companies that installed it.
Source: The Guardian
That is how vernacular architecture met its maker. Air-conditioning.
Over the last few days, southern Europe has been - burning. From Portugal to France, the countries have been devastated by wildfires.
French Prime Minister François Bayrou says a huge, deadly wildfire sweeping through the south of France is a "catastrophe on an unprecedented scale".
He has been visiting the Aude region, where wildfires have scorched an area larger than Paris. Bayrou said the wildfire is linked to global warming and drought.
An elderly woman has been killed and at least one other person is missing as 2,150 firefighters continue to tackle the blaze, which has burnt more than 15,000 hectares (58 sq miles). At least 13 people have been injured, according to media reports.
Source: BBC
Firefighters across Spain, Portugal, Greece, Turkey and the Balkans were battling wildfires on Tuesday, with another heatwave pushing temperatures above 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit) across parts of Europe.
Global warming is giving the Mediterranean region hotter, drier summers, scientists say, with wildfires surging each year and sometimes whipping up into "whirls".
Source: Reuters
While the south is burning, for northern Europe it is a light sear.
In south-west France, records were broken on Monday in Angoulême, Bergerac, Bordeaux, Saint-Émilion and Saint-Girons. Météo France said the “often remarkable, even unprecedented, maximum temperatures” in the region were 12C above the norm for the last few decades.
In Croatia, air temperature records were set in Šibenik, at 39.5C, and Dubrovnik, at 38.9C, while large forest fires raged along its coasts and ripped through neighbouring countries in the Balkans.
The day before, Hungary broke its daily maximum temperature record when a weather station in Körösladány hit 39.9C. The capital, Budapest, also broke its daily maximum record as it sweltered through 38.7C heat.
[…]
The heatwave in southern Europe comes as Nordic countries recover from unprecedented temperatures above 30C in the Arctic Circle this month.
Source: Guardian
The homes in Europe are designed to insulate and hold in heat, but that is not turning into a curse. Therefore, the leader of a far-right French Party, Marine Le Pen, made a suggestion. Let us get everyone to buy air-conditioners! It has become a huge source of controversy.
Marine Le Pen, the far-right leader in France, declared that she would deploy a “major air-conditioning equipment plan” around the country if her nationalist party eventually came to power. Marine Tondelier, the head of France’s Green party, scoffed at Ms. Le Pen’s idea and, instead, suggested solutions to warming temperatures that included “greening” cities and making buildings more energy efficient.
Source: New York Times
The right vs left; comfort vs climate debate has arrived in France.
Even though the right highlights that 70% of electricity in France is generated through Nuclear and another 20% is renewable, the left disagrees with the idea and thinks that more climate-adaptive architecture should be adopted.
In America, the right denies climate change completely. Trump has done his best to roll back any policy that was touted as “Green” by his predecessor. The left, on the other hand, uses its Green credentials not to fix the climate problem but to further capitalism.
France is facing a similar divide, albeit a more honest one, between the right and the left. The division is about climate change, but arguably in a different mould.
Which one do you think will win out? The one that generates more revenue or the one that does not. I am not going to hold my breath but I will be greatly surprised if it is the latter.