Stubborn Europeans REFUSE to Get Air Conditioning, SUFFER in Heat Wave: Robby Soave — RISING

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: Well, here in America, we've been enjoying our European World Cup visitors who have marveled at so much our great nation has to offer, from unlimited refills to the marvel that is Buc-ee's. And Europe has much to offer as well. I've just returned from a trip there, and every time I go, I'm impressed by what I see and what I learn about our shared cultural history. But Europe has to get with the times when it comes to air conditioning. Many Americans don't know this, and if they do know it, we nevertheless don't understand it. But European countries are very opposed to air conditioning, even when it's extremely hot there, as it is now. In fact, there are numerous deaths from heat exhaustion in Europe each year. The old and the sickly are particularly vulnerable. According to the World Health Organization, 200,000 people have died from the heat in Europe in just the past several years. You know how liberals are always telling us that the U.S. is an outlier in terms of gun deaths and car crashes? Well, Europe's an outlier to an even greater degree in its idiosyncratic choice to simply allow people to suffer and die because of the heat. There are a lot of poorer countries, actually, that do use air conditioning at higher rates than Europe. My colleague at Reason Magazine, Matthew Petty, notes that 90% of homes in the U.K. do not have AC and 80% of homes in the European Union. Now, to be clear, the problem isn't that there's too little money to afford AC. Poorer nations do have it. Europe just doesn't want to have it for a mix of aesthetic and environmental reasons, even though neither of these sets of reasons is really so valid. AC just needs energy to run, and if your energy sources are clean, great. It's a terrible tragedy that the progressive environmental movement has convinced everyone that the human condition is to just suffer for the good of the earth. We do not need to be sweaty and uncomfortable and more liable to die of heat stroke in order to preserve the world for our children. This is simply not mandatory. Yet, Europe has a culture of shaming anyone who does dare to install an AC unit. In a lot of places, you have to get the community's permission. Sort of like what we do to homeowners in many American cities, forcing them to jump through all sorts of bureaucratic hoops in order to make changes to your own property. Now, that's bad, of course, but Europe is much, much worse. At least we let people buy AC units. The European Union, though, actively discourages people from getting AC. It wants them to just use fans, which don't get the job done, in extremely hot weather. In France, the environmentalist left has a strong prohibition on AC. Matthew Frazier, a writer for The Spectator magazine, writes this, The French left are overwhelmingly hostile to air conditioning. They say it contributes to global warming for French politicians from left-wing ecologist party who control several city councils. Opposition to air conditioning is an inflexible doctrine asserted with quasi-religious fervor. In Paris, the ecologists pushed for the purchase of new buses without air conditioning. The consequences for commuters were disastrous, but supporters believe that suffering is regarded as necessary to awaken citizens to the coming apocalypse of climate change. Enduring the cruel afflictions of extreme heat is an expiatory ritual that expunges the sins of overconsumption in a society addicted to fossil fuels and nuclear power. End quote. My European friends, this is sick and wrong. You shouldn't live like this. You deserve leaders who are, yes, much more chill on the AC issue. Good luck. And so do we, because, Lindsay, I saw Zoran Mamdani tweeting last night, New Yorkers, please set your thermostat to 78 degrees to conserve energy. When you're not in the house? No, at all times. And he said we would do this in government buildings as well. 78 is unlivable. [00:03:55] Speaker 2: Well, you know what? It's pretty freezing in this building. A little bit unlivable for me. We all come in here and freeze our behinds our behinds. Well, you can wear a sweater. Excuse me. Or get a blanket or whatever. Excuse me. You've been cold in here, too. Let me tell you something, and let me get to my point. The U.S., we use stuff. If it's too cold, you can wear more labors. Okay. You're layered. I let you do a whole radar. May I? We are a wasteful country. I love this country. Oh, my God. [00:04:19] Speaker 1: Don't even start. [00:04:20] Speaker 2: Whenever you're ready, let me talk. Go ahead. If you still have something to say, please. Go ahead. I'd like to give you a tour. I'm just prepared to be offended. [00:04:25] Speaker 1: Go ahead. [00:04:25] Speaker 2: I'm offended that you don't like to conserve energy and save our environment. And globally, you're trying to shun other nations because you feel like they should be as wasteful as the U.S. is. Again, I love my country. But the U.S., on average, uses more electricity per person than any other country. Food waste. We waste more food than countries' most high-earning countries. We waste way more food than them per person. Water. We waste more water. We are wasteful. I mean, I can keep... Meaning we let it run. Meaning we use more per person. Meaning as we get our water bills... [00:04:57] Speaker 1: We like to enjoy our lives. [00:04:58] Speaker 2: Why is it enjoying if you're just letting it run endlessly and using resources? [00:05:02] Speaker 1: The resources of the earth do not have rights or needs. They are for us to use to make our lives better. [00:05:09] Speaker 2: Have you ever been to hotels throughout the United States versus hotels throughout Europe, I'm sure? Most hotels in Europe, and I've been to many, require you to have your key card, meaning you're in the room, actually by the door to make sure the lights are on. And hotels here just allow us to leave the room, leave the TV on, leave the lights on, be wasteful. You understand what I'm saying? So around the globe, they've found ways to better conserve and protect the environment. And you are completely uninterested in doing that. And you want to ridicule folks that tell you, let's find ways to protect and save our environment. In Europe, they've dramatically lowered carbon emissions. And so they are way better at protecting the environment than we have been. And some of these strategies are effective. You talk about people dying from heat exhaustion. [00:05:48] Speaker 1: By the thousands. [00:05:49] Speaker 2: Okay, that happens in every country, I'm pretty sure. [00:05:51] Speaker 1: No, it happens by the thousands in Europe. [00:05:53] Speaker 2: Okay, but cleaner air, cleaner air when you protect the environment. Guess what that leads to? That leads to less heart attacks, less strokes, less premature deaths, less asthma attacks. This is all what happens when you have clean air and you protect the environment. So if you want to talk about deaths, more people are protected with clean air. [00:06:08] Speaker 1: Okay, but this has nothing to do with using AC itself. It has to do with what power source you're using to generate the energy for AC. You can use clean sources of energy. I'm for using clean sources of energy. I'm for nuclear power. Something the entire environmental left movement shut down everywhere, even though that's clean and safe and affordable. I'm for moving away from fossil fuels. That's what contributes to the problems you're describing. Sure. Of course, again, nuclear power is the most reasonable alternative. And the left won't let us have that. So, you know, that's the solar power and wind and those sources are not, you know, good enough to fully replace fossil fuels yet. But the point is, we don't need to, you can't, you can't be like, I expect you to suffer because, like, the purpose of the planet is for us to be comfortable and live on it. [00:07:06] Speaker 2: Do you suffer with the fan on? Because the fan is quite nice. Well, thousands of people die. I have the ceiling fan on. It's quite nice. [00:07:12] Speaker 1: I need the AC and a fan. [00:07:14] Speaker 2: Yeah, because you're, you are a wasteful American. I'm so sorry to tell you that, Robbie. You fall in the category of wasteful American. No disrespect. I'm just letting you know that's what you are. You're a proud wasteful American. You are a proud wasteful American. I am proud. And do you realize that Europe and the housing stock was built long before HVAC units were fully restored? [00:07:32] Speaker 1: Do you whip yourself with, like, the thing with, like, knots and thorns on it, like a fundamentalist Christian sect or something? Do you think suffering brings you closer to the divine? Like, I don't believe any of that. Well, maybe, okay, maybe it's a fundamental. We are meant to be comfortable and happy and satisfied. [00:07:48] Speaker 2: I see what's happening here. Maybe it's a fundamental difference, Robbie. And you correct me if I'm wrong, in the way that we grew up. And so, for example, if I was washing dishes, right, my father would tell me, turn off the water while I'm sitting there just scrubbing the dishes, walking away. Turn it off and rinse them all off at one time. He would tell me to turn off the lights behind me. It was a very serious matter. If I turned the house on 66, I would get yelled at. No, we're keeping it at a smooth 70, because these are, number one, his bills, and number two, it's very wasteful. We shouldn't have the door wide open and also the AC blasting. And so these are things that we can do to conserve. [00:08:16] Speaker 1: You pay for those things, and you don't want to waste your own money unnecessarily. Right, but because we want to live such luxurious lives as Americans, we are very wasteful. I turn the lights off when I'm not using it. [00:08:26] Speaker 2: And if Europe is trying to find ways to balance the two, I don't see why we should ridicule them for strategies that they are implementing. [00:08:31] Speaker 1: I have not found a balance at all. People are miserable there, and they die. Old and sick people die from the heat. [00:08:39] Speaker 2: The average American produces roughly twice as much carbon pollution as the average European. That's what I have from the studies that I've researched. So what? So then you just say you don't care about the environment. I don't care. You don't care about saving the future. You don't care about younger people growing up and not all having asthma. You don't care about any of that stuff. [00:08:59] Speaker 1: We will invent what will get us out of these energy issues and environmental harms. By the way, environmental harms, which are always and every time exaggerated and overstated by so-called experts, the predictions, the hockey stick predictions of how unlivable the Earth would be within the end of the decade, always wrong every single time. We're still here. They said we'd all have, you know, burned to a crisp from global warming by now. [00:09:30] Speaker 2: But I hate this analogy because just because it didn't go to the most extreme case, the fact that glaciers are still melting, we see that there's effects in Greenland. We don't live on glaciers. No, but they're still melting. It affects the world. Like, think about somebody other than yourself and other than the U.S. [00:09:46] Speaker 1: The world has gone through ice ages and heat waves, the climate changes of its own accord and due to human activity to some degree. [00:09:56] Speaker 2: Due, exactly, to human activity. And so we're trying to mitigate some of that. Stop criticizing people for going too far. We're not going to mitigate the harm. This is bring the pendulum back and actually try to save and protect our environment. [00:10:07] Speaker 1: And by suffering, our suffering does not purge the planet's sins. [00:10:11] Speaker 2: Robby, when you leave your house, do you leave your AC running so you come back to a cool house? Be honest. [00:10:17] Speaker 1: Yes. [00:10:17] Speaker 2: Okay, that's not right. You can easily turn it to 78, like Zoran Mondani suggested. If I'm leaving for a long time. No, I'm talking about for the day. No, he did not say. If your husband is gone and you're gone, do you let the house be cool? Just for, you have no pets in there, so you just let it be cool. I turn it up to about 78 and no one's in the house, like Zoran Mondani's suggesting. [00:10:36] Speaker 1: I do that if I'm going away, if I'm going away for the weekend or going on a trip, then I'll do that, yes. [00:10:42] Speaker 2: But if you're coming home later today, you need it to be nice and cool. [00:10:44] Speaker 1: No one is gone for more than a few hours at a time. [00:10:48] Speaker 2: But even those few hours, you see what I'm saying, can conserve energy. Okay. You're right to know. Yeah, exactly, you should. I want you to be honest. I want the audience to know. Americans think mostly like you, and that's okay, but don't ridicule folks that are actually considering the repercussions of constantly overusing air conditioning. [00:11:06] Speaker 1: Lindsay, I'm so sorry to devastate you in this way. The climate apocalypse is not going to happen. It doesn't have to be an apocalypse. You're not going to get... Or there to be major changes in our climate. Everyone who's predicted, oh, on this day, the earth will turn to a fiery ball of death and we'll all be disintegrated, have been as correct as the people that said, on this day, alien mothership will pass overhead and rapture us all into the kingdom. I'm really excited. These are equivalent levels of illusion. [00:11:34] Speaker 2: I'm really excited for when you, if you decide and when you decide if or when to have children and you want to see what happens with their children and their children, you think about that and consider these things, you'll start to not litter. I'm going to order them to turn off the water so they're not wasting my... You'll tell them to turn off the water. Because they're not wasting my bill. [00:11:50] Speaker ?: You're going to change your perspective. Because they're not wasting my bill. You're going to change your perspective. [00:11:50] Speaker 2: Only because of money? Yes. Money is the only thing that drives your concern here. Correct. Okay. Correct. You just got to leave it there. [00:11:56] Speaker 1: And I don't want to live under Zoran Mamdani's socialist AC theory. [00:12:00] Speaker 2: Pardon him for trying to make sure that we save the environment. [00:12:02] Speaker 1: Speaking of democratic socialist, a candidate for Congress is going viral after describing the 9/11 attacks as inevitable. We'll be right back.