The French health minister recently announced that the country suffered an estimated 1,500 heat deaths over two recent heat waves that lasted a combined 18 days. The number sounds high, and it sounds that way because it is: according to the CDC, fewer than 700 die from heat annually in the United States, a country with a population nearly five times that of its oldest ally.
Is there something incorrect with the number the minister shared? His exact quote, according to The Guardian, was: “We have 1,500 deaths recorded more than the average for these months,” indicating that not all were explicitly diagnosed as “heat-related,” as they probably are in the CDC figure. Still, though, it would take an error of a large order of magnitude to bring that number within the U.S.’s realm for an entire year. In France, it’s being attributed to 18 non-consecutive days.
Why so many? Counterintuitively, the answer seems to be related to the fact that it’s hotter in the United States than it is in France. This 2015 Seattle Times article discusses the differing prevalence of air conditioning on either side of the North Atlantic, sharing that while 87 percent of American homes have air conditioning, that number in France is below five percent. This is a startling difference. Some of it, of course, is simply a cultural difference. People prefer different luxuries, and people differ in their willingness to live somewhere air conditioning is not a luxury but a necessity. Some of it, too, has to do with history. Older buildings are more prevalent in a country unified around 1000 AD than they are here. Older buildings are, for the most part, more difficult to air condition than newer buildings.
But some of it has to do with how necessary air conditioning is in the first place. In Paris, located in the north-central part of France, the average high temperatures in July and August were around 77 degrees Fahrenheit from 1981-2010, similar to what they were in Portland, Maine across the same period (data available on Wikipedia). In France’s second-largest city, Marseilles, which sits on the country’s southern coast, the average highs in July and August were around 86 degrees Fahrenheit over that period, somewhere between what they were in Indianapolis and Louisville. And while there are certainly hot days in Louisville and Indianapolis in the summers, those cities sit fairly close to the American population’s north/south median. Meaning, roughly half the population of the United States lives to the south of the latitude at which, at least in the eastern half of the U.S., you’d find comparable temperatures to France’s hottest. The areas in which people choose to live in the United States require more air conditioning, over an average summer, than their counterparts in France.
Still, clearly, France (and much of Europe) needs more air conditioning, or another way to deal with extreme heat. Back in 2003, another heat wave killed an estimated 15,000 in France. If heat waves capable of this sort of death toll are happening sixteen years apart, preparation must be done. Clearly, some was done—regardless of the difference in severity and continuity, a 90% decrease in deaths from the 2003 heat waves to 2019’s is a positive development. Hopefully for those at risk in the French population and elsewhere in Europe, it’s just the start.
