Inside France: Air conditioning wars, football focus and balloons

Local France

4 days ago

Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.
Breezy assurances
France's most recent heatwave has
sparked a furious political debate about air conditioning
- a facility that is not widespread in France, and is in fact actively resisted by a significant portion of the population.
Until recently there wasn't much discussion about this, simply because it wasn't needed in much of the country. But France's hotter summers and
longer and more intense heatwaves
mean that air conditioning has come to the forefront of the political discussion.
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Marine Le Pen's Rassemblement National - a party that is extremely reluctant to even talk about the climate crisis that is driving those warming temperatures, and in fact actively opposes renewable energy sources
like wind turbines
- has come with a 'grand plan for air conditioning'.
The debate that followed seems to me to be a neat illustration of the difficulty of combating the simplified rhetoric of the far-right.
Put simply, the RN position is: "It's hot. Let's have more air conditioning."
Meanwhile the position of the left and the centre is: "Yes, it's hot and people in high-risk groups may need air conditioning during a heatwave. However, air conditioning is bad for the environment and it won't solve the underlying problem which is climate change. We need to look for alternative solutions as well, while working to tackle climate change."
The problem is that one of those positions is a lot easier to communicate than the other.
Also, when it's stiflingly hot, your apartment feels like an inner circle of hell and you couldn't sleep last night because the temperature never fell below 30C, one of those positions is instinctively more attractive than the other.
That doesn't make it right, though.
Air conditioning is a sticking plaster at best that solves none of the underlying issues and makes the problem worse.
Even if we discount the overall environmental impact of AC units (and we definitely shouldn't) there's the simple fact that the heat chucked out by these units raises the temperature for everyone. Sustained use of air conditioning for just 10 days raises the overall temperature of a city by up to 2.4C,
according to environment agency Ademe
.
ANALYSIS: Why are the French resistant to air conditioning?✎
Summer 2025
Predicting the future is always hard but it does seem like
France is in for another hot summer
. We have a go at predicting what else summer 2025 may bring - from strikes to political drama - in the latest Talking France podcast. Listen
here
or on the link below.
The podcast is now taking a break for summer, but we hope to be back in September. You can catch up on our back catalogue
here
, and if you like what you hear you might consider supporting us by
becoming a member
of The Local, or recommending us to family and friends, which will allow us to keep making it.
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Football focus
A post on Bskysocial.
France take on England on Saturday in the Women's Euro 2025 and we have a
handy guide for some French phrases
to use while watching
les bleues
.
Incidentally, this is an example of the beautiful efficiency of the French language -
les bleus
= the France men's team,
les bleues
= the France women's team,
les bleuets
= the France junior team.
Allez les bleues !
READ ALSO
:
How to watch the women's Euro 2025 tournament on French TV✎
Balloon
In my opinion, the perfect way to end a summer's day is to go and see La vasque - the Paris hot air balloon that was here during the Olympics and Paralympics - rise.
It's sunset ascent is quite calm; there's no announcement or soundtrack, at the appointed time it simply gently floats upwards above the Tuileries, accompanied by a murmur of joy from the assembled crowd.
This
will happen every evening
(weather permitting) until September.
The balloon rising above the Tuileries at sunset, as the assembled crowd take photographs. Photo: The Local
Inside France is our weekly look at some of the news, talking points and gossip in France that you might not have heard about. It's published each Saturday and members can receive it directly to their inbox, by going to their newsletter preferences or adding their email to the sign-up box in this article.