Here is a trivia question: which continent suffers the most heat-related deaths per capita? By a wide margin, the dubious prize goes to… Europe. In the summer of 2022 alone, more than 61,000 Europeans died as a result of the heat.
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The real explanation comes down to two letters Europe stubbornly refuses to learn: A/C. Across the continent, only about a fifth of homes have air-conditioning, against nearly 90 percent in the United States and more than 90 percent in Japan.
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Nor does heat affect only the old. For every degree above 25°C (77°F), our cognitive performance declines by around two percent. And if synapses suffer, so does economic activity. Lee Kuan Yew , the architect of modern Singapore, was once asked to name the secret of his tropical city-state's economic miracle. His answer consisted of the same two letters, A/C, which he hailed as one of the signal inventions of history. By keeping the heat outside, Singapore could stay productive all year round.
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This is a technophobia that costs lives, as the data scientist Hannah Ritchie observes in her book Not the End of the World. In 2020 and 2021, Western governments spent billions protecting the elderly from COVID death. Why, then, is the same vulnerable group denied a cool room in a heat wave? The reflexive objection—carbon emissions—does not survive contact with the numbers.
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