I wouldn’t say it’s surprisingly easy. It’s possible, but it comes with substantial costs. Paris is throwing a ton of money at some of the solutions you’ve mentioned and the results are meager at best. Hopefully they’ll improve as time goes on.
Give it a few years and a few more heat waves, all the people living in old buildings which are too expensive to insulate will be getting ac. There’s no getting around the basic need for fresh air, no matter old habits and environmental costs. I’m sticking to ice packs and cold showers for now, don’t know for how much longer though.
As far as Paris is concerned, we’re actually extremely ill-prepared for high heats. Parisians have the highest risk of heat-related death in Europe. Hardware stores are packed with AC units every summer now because people are forced to start using them. Luckily we’ve had terrible weather so far this summer, fingers crossed it stays that way.
To be fair the supposed point of the snap elections is to make the far right seem impotent by forcing them into a divided government (which is already a terrifying “strategy”: just give them the keys to the building and hope for the best?) They’re just refusing to play that game. The fact that the president is playing around with the country’s future like this is a fucking unconscionable disgrace.
In France there are plenty of people who ask for Dafalgan or neurofen but have no idea what paracetamol or ibuprofen are.
Hey, you leave them and their strawwomen alone!
Both can be true.