Helen, I think you're responding to one version of the argument, but perhaps not the strongest one.
If the claim is simply, "More Europeans die from heat than Americans die from guns, therefore Europe is bad," I agree, that's just point-scoring.
But there's another way to read the comparison.
Suppose Europe experiences roughly 63,000 heat-related deaths in a year, while the U.S. experiences roughly 15,000 firearm homicides. The interesting question isn't whether the two causes are morally equivalent. They aren't.
The interesting question is why some causes of preventable death mobilize enormous political capital, media attention, philanthropy, activism, technological investment, and institutional urgency, while others of comparable or greater scale are treated primarily as technical or infrastructure problems.
That's not whataboutism. It's a question about how societies allocate attention and resources.
We compare unrelated causes of death all the time in public health; not because they are causally connected, but because governments, charities, researchers, and the public all operate under finite budgets, finite political attention, and finite institutional capacity.
So I think the comparison becomes much more interesting if the question changes from:
"Which problem is worse?"
to:
"Why do some problems become moral crusades while others become engineering problems?"
I would be interested to read that. I focus mostly on the culture war elements on things and bad reasoning, but if you develop an argument about this aspect of it, please nudge me about it!
Helen, this is a guy who can’t read bios. Or he can, but he is afraid of someone challenging his worldview by using, God forbid, AI. Debate the substance, buddy, if you can.
Noooo, you two are absolutely not allowed to fight. You are both most excellent reasoners and liberals. Now stop on it before I knock your heads together.
To address your query regarding the allocation of societal attention, one must observe the following:
First, public discourse functions not as a rational marketplace of mortality statistics, but as a complex system of emotional salience—the perceived urgency of a threat is driven by its narrative potential, not its statistical magnitude.
Second, this is not a failure of logic, but a feature of human cognition—we are biologically predisposed to prioritize agency-based threats, such as interpersonal violence, over systemic, entropic failures like climate-induced heat exposure.
Third, the distinction you draw between "moral crusades" and "engineering problems" is a fundamental divergence in political utility; moral crusades mobilize the electorate, while engineering problems merely require the technocratic maintenance of the status quo.
The substance of your argument is noted—it is a study in prioritization—yet your methodology remains tethered to the search for an artificial ghost. We are not discussing the nature of intelligence; we are merely observing the limits of yours.
You’ve basically rewritten my argument in denser prose and then congratulated yourself for it.
Yes, attention follows emotion, agency, and political utility rather than mortality statistics. That’s exactly what I said. You’ve described the mechanism; you haven’t touched the question.
The question is whether we’re comfortable with a system where what becomes a moral crusade is dictated by narrative potential and mobilization value instead of by lives saved. If your answer is “that’s just how humans are, stop thinking about it,” say that plainly. Dressing it up as a diagnosis of my intelligence doesn’t make it a serious response.
Last time I checked, age wasn’t preventable (yet anyway :)).
My point isn’t “more people die of X, therefore we must fix X first.” It’s that among preventable and policy‑sensitive causes of death, some get turned into moral crusades and others get quietly filed under “engineering and infrastructure.” Guns and heat both belong in that latter category; age doesn’t. The interesting question is why our political and media systems fixate on one and largely ignore the other, given finite attention and resources.
And my answer was pointing to the consideration that some are more preventable than others, as some are seen as more natural and some as more artificial. Which could be a fallacy but also as something partially based
Martin Amis probed the asshole/arsehole distinction in his novel The Information: “It should be said that an asshole is not the same thing as an arsehole. An Atlantic divides them. We are all assholes some of the time, but an arsehole is an arsehole all of the time.”
Many (not all) American comments about air conditioning online have reminded me of many (not all) American comments about soccer during the World Cup. A lot of Americans are rolling up their sleeves and tweeting about how soccer can be made better. In both cases Americans have discovered something about the outside world and become extremely agitated to find other people don't do things the way Americans prefer.
Also, aircon is a talking point in many European nations now in a way it wasn’t 30 years ago due to recurring, climate change-related heatwaves. Accusing “Europe” (a famously homogeneous place, lol) of just neglecting to put aircon into its centuries-old housing stock now that climate change is causing serious health impacts is quite “let them eat cake.”
I’m an American living in the UK with window unit aircon in the bedrooms. I think a lot about guns in America (I would like the US to regulate guns the same way we regulate car ownership and insurance since I think eliminating them entirely is impossible in the US) and aircon in Europe (I think there needs to be widespread government investment in making air conditioning accessible for citizens and workers).
Americans face a lot of taunting, shaming, and disgust at the number of gun deaths in our country from Europeans on a regular basis. School shootings are frequently brought out very early in an argument by Europeans as a way to discredit anything an American has to say about basically any policy or problem. Americans are used to being shamed and silenced by Europeans because our government has failed to protect its citizens from gun violence.
The fact that Europe is struggling with its own, arguably much less complicated to resolve crisis of unnecessary deaths (disallowing air conditioning is not written into any country’s constitution to my knowledge) due to heat related illness, then seems ludicrous to an American. Americans look at these statistics and wonder if European governments are so skilled at looking after their citizens (like we have been repeatedly told) then why are so many people dying from a cause with such a straightforward solution?
Basically I think Americans have a chip on their shoulder and Europeans have a superiority complex and both like to take the piss out of each other for their failings. And that’s why the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths keeps coming up. It’s just a game of gotcha.
Yeah. That will always happen, of course, but it makes me very sad to see it. So many of my most respected thinkers and most loved people are in America.
I am not a fan of it. I feel trapped in the middle. I love both my countries and yeah they aren’t perfect, but we can work on improving them without shaming each other. That would be my preference but it’s rare
I don’t know about that. I think that might be negativity bias. I’m off to the US tomorrow and I anticipate finding people to be warm and welcoming as usual. We shall see.
I should qualify my statement, people being respectful about these topics is pretty rare online but in person people are generally lovely to each other. I hope you have a wonderful trip ☺️
I think your piece misses the most critical point raised by your own commenter, Vincent Bocchinfuso.
You frame the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths as a "tit-for-tat" argument based on resentment. However, this misses the systemic question: why do some preventable deaths mobilize enormous institutional and media urgency, while others are treated as mere "infrastructure problems"?
It is not a matter of "tit-for-tat" or comparing apples to oranges but a critique of how societies allocate political, economic, and institutional attention. When the U.S. demonstrates systemic disparities in life expectancy, maternal mortality, and social stability compared to Europe, observers aren't necessarily acting out of "resentment" but they are pointing out that the American "system" is failing on its own metrics of success.
Dismissing these critiques as childish or "personally aggrieved" is a convenient way to avoid discussing the hard data of institutional performance. If we care about solving problems rather than winning arguments, we shouldn't pathologize the comparison but examine what those disparities actually say about the health of the respective societies.
No, I just wrote about a different aspect. The one I wanted to address. I did that deliberately. Vincent’s thoughts on why some preventable deaths gain so much traction and others do not are also valuable and I shared them, but I chose to write about a different aspect.
"The freedom not to have air conditioning belongs in a category with other lifestyle choices that can impact health negatively. It belongs on a shelf with smoking, drinking heavily, being obese or leading a sedentary lifestyle."
Mystifying rare miss here, I think. AC may be beneficial in many circumstances, but it is an artificial imposition on the natural order of things; going without is not a vice, any more than going without a car or a telephone, or refusing to eat certain foods. We are discussing this subject because the European majority do without, and the majority of those survive just fine.
AC also carries economic penalties for its installation, operation and maintenance, as well as health penalties which are poorly understood: promoting mold growth, CO2 accumulation in enclosed spaces, and bodily shock on encountering the uncontrolled climate outside. Perhaps these are minor tradeoffs! But they're recognized in many societies, including yours: isn't "fresh air fiend" a Britishism? Surely their fiendishness is ironic!
Well, we're writing in the contexts of the heat deaths. My previous piece was about how many Europeans do not like to artificially chill themselves. It's the elderly mostly who are vulnerable to dying if they do not.
But natural does not indicate healthier. It can be quite healthy to heat and cool ourselves to within our optimal range! And we're used to stepping from warm spaces to cold ones because we have heating in winter. I don't think any health risks have been demonstrated. There are all sorts of narratives.
If those who forgo AC aren't elderly or infirm, then what are the negative health impacts which would compare to those of smoking or drinking to excess? Or do you mean to limit your statement to that population?
Heating is comparable in more ways than one: house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning attributable to heating technologies cause many cases of injury and death. (4,000 annual ER visits from CO poisoning alone, in the UK.) But outliers are not sufficient to characterize heating, or lack thereof, as an unhealthy choice for the individual.
A bit bizarre that lack of AC should be set against gun ownership. The European attitude towards Covid is much more perplexing here. Why should it be OK to accept thousands of unnecessary heat deaths while the threat of Covid deaths triggered massive lockdowns? What’s wrong with Europe for it to accept gutting its economy for a virus but refusing to install AC?
It depends who you are talking when you say “Europe.”
If you mean political leaders the policies for Covid lockdowns were about trying to prevent the spread of a virus which threatened to overwhelm healthcare systems and kill people. The policies on AC are mostly to do with reducing energy use or protecting architecture. The governments themselves are unlikely to give everybody AC and I don’t think America does either. They can be appealed to to make having it cheaper and easier and installing it in state run care homes and hospitals.
If you mean European people, they had a variety of views about Covid lockdowns and this probably does not have much in common with whether or not they install AC. In the Mediterranean countries they are more likely to and in the Northern ones much less so. This is largely because it’s only hot enough to become uncomfortable for a few days a year and they’d rather spend their money on a new shower or upgrade their car.
I was referring to the willingness during Covid to bear economic hardship (and I think lockdowns were popular across the continent, with the notable exception maybe of Sweden) to save lives, whereas that same willingness is entirely absent when it comes to heatwaves. Where are the free ACs including subsidized installation? Wouldn’t lives be saved? I’m just a bit puzzled by the diverging policies when it comes to essentially the same issue
Yes of course I am - but listening to the rhetoric at the time of Covid, nothing appeared more important than saving lives. But in regard to heatwaves, it’s not even a topic of discussion
Well, it is, but people who oppose AC for climate reasons say that climate change will cost way more lives and so we need to use other methods of keeping cool. It’s not inconsistent even if you don’t agree with it. I don’t. I think we need to do better with energy and generate more clean energy. My AC is powered by my solar panels.
But mostly, people are not using AC because they’ve not become accustomed to it, don’t feel a need for it and like to feel the seasons. In countries that are nearer the Mediterranean, most people have AC but they still only tend to use it when it’s really hot and then only to bring the temperature down to bearable hot. Like Italy. Melon objects to the EU’s energy guidelines but still has a rule for public buildings only using AC to bring the temperature down to 26 and that’s what most people who have AC do anyway. This is as much as about waste and being able to tolerate things as anything else. The same attitude exists here in the UK but more often it’s about cold because we have way more elderly people die of that. Don’t put your heating on until October. Keep it at 20. Don’t put it on if another jumper will do. Turn it off at night. Etc. Elderly people are most likely to be like this. The last of the post war “Make do and mend. Don’t make a fuss” generation. Have to convince them their bodies can’t regulate temperature so well now.
Well exactly - some AC to keep indoor temperature at 26, for a few days in summer, wouldn’t consume that much energy compared with the benefits? I just wonder here about the choice…
One requires the simple removal of (permission for) an artificial intervention (guns) whilst the other requires the provision of an artificial intervention (a/c).
It's like saying that not providing an irrigation system for an endangered species in an arid landscape is the moral equivalent to allowing and enabling people to kill it.
The symmetry seems to me one of emotions, pride/stubbornness viewed as outmoded and deadly.
Americans are proud of their tradition of owning firearms, and Europeans think that this is stupid and that American policymakers are failing their people.
Europeans are proud of their tradition of doing without AC, and Americans think that this is stupid and that European policymakers are failing their people.
Maybe a bit of both. Once they've been given to think about it, I don't think there's much doubt people on a given side of the Atlantic will be disturbed by the other's problems.
I have yet to see a good response to an argument frequently made by defenders of the 2nd Amendment, “If we criminalised gun ownership, the only people who own guns will be criminals.”
This is exactly the situation in all Europe (possibly not counting military and police) and somehow it manages to not be a problem?
I struggle to see how this can even be considered a legitimate question.
Also, Europeans being condescending towards cowboys are right ;P
The material reality of America is very different from Europe. 80 million Americans own 400 million guns, spread across millions of urban, suburban, and rural square miles, with variations in state and local regulatory regimes and law enforcement capacity. If we criminalized guns tomorrow, it’s hard to imagine how we’d accomplish locating and confiscating even a significant percentage of them.
If someone believes gun ownership in America should be restricted to only police and the military, the legitimate questions start with “Who enforces it, how much will it cost, and how exactly do they plan to implement it?”
I see the logistic problem you are trying to highlight but I'm not convinced. For a start, it is different from the one suggested in the post, which assumes ordinary people will comply with the law and so the only guns circulating will be owned by criminals.
You on the contrary seem to suggest that ordinary people will refuse to comply with the law.
In Italy after WW2 a lot of ex-military and a lot of partisans (freedom fighters) had guns. An order was issued to surrender them after 1945 and most complied (though some retained them, knowing it was illegal). Nobody ever suggested the problem with organized crime derived from those guns, almost all were acquired later through black channels. So it doesn't seem the problem would necessarily pan out as you suggest, even with no need to detail the logistic.
You don't need to detail how you will implement road speed limits control because most will comply, controls are a simple deterrent to those very very few who won't.
“Criticisms of governmental policy making it difficult or expensive to own AC and failing to provide it to vulnerable people at high risk of heat exhaustion are warranted and generally conducted seriously and thoughtfully. People who are concerned with that debate are not generally trying to make arguments comparing heat deaths to gun deaths.”
Helen, I think you're responding to one version of the argument, but perhaps not the strongest one.
If the claim is simply, "More Europeans die from heat than Americans die from guns, therefore Europe is bad," I agree, that's just point-scoring.
But there's another way to read the comparison.
Suppose Europe experiences roughly 63,000 heat-related deaths in a year, while the U.S. experiences roughly 15,000 firearm homicides. The interesting question isn't whether the two causes are morally equivalent. They aren't.
The interesting question is why some causes of preventable death mobilize enormous political capital, media attention, philanthropy, activism, technological investment, and institutional urgency, while others of comparable or greater scale are treated primarily as technical or infrastructure problems.
That's not whataboutism. It's a question about how societies allocate attention and resources.
We compare unrelated causes of death all the time in public health; not because they are causally connected, but because governments, charities, researchers, and the public all operate under finite budgets, finite political attention, and finite institutional capacity.
So I think the comparison becomes much more interesting if the question changes from:
"Which problem is worse?"
to:
"Why do some problems become moral crusades while others become engineering problems?"
To me, that's the conversation worth having.
I would be interested to read that. I focus mostly on the culture war elements on things and bad reasoning, but if you develop an argument about this aspect of it, please nudge me about it!
Okie dokie, I'll tag you on a post in a bit :)
Helen, this is a bot. No, I don't have Pangram. Stake anything you like on it. I can smell it.
Noooo! Not Vincent. He makes good liberal arguments. I like his stuff.
Helen, this is a guy who can’t read bios. Or he can, but he is afraid of someone challenging his worldview by using, God forbid, AI. Debate the substance, buddy, if you can.
Noooo, you two are absolutely not allowed to fight. You are both most excellent reasoners and liberals. Now stop on it before I knock your heads together.
I think we hugged it out :)
Substance? Sure. Please share your prompt.
You are the one who “@” me buddy. It’s your dime, talk or I hang up.
Ok.
To address your query regarding the allocation of societal attention, one must observe the following:
First, public discourse functions not as a rational marketplace of mortality statistics, but as a complex system of emotional salience—the perceived urgency of a threat is driven by its narrative potential, not its statistical magnitude.
Second, this is not a failure of logic, but a feature of human cognition—we are biologically predisposed to prioritize agency-based threats, such as interpersonal violence, over systemic, entropic failures like climate-induced heat exposure.
Third, the distinction you draw between "moral crusades" and "engineering problems" is a fundamental divergence in political utility; moral crusades mobilize the electorate, while engineering problems merely require the technocratic maintenance of the status quo.
The substance of your argument is noted—it is a study in prioritization—yet your methodology remains tethered to the search for an artificial ghost. We are not discussing the nature of intelligence; we are merely observing the limits of yours.
You’ve basically rewritten my argument in denser prose and then congratulated yourself for it.
Yes, attention follows emotion, agency, and political utility rather than mortality statistics. That’s exactly what I said. You’ve described the mechanism; you haven’t touched the question.
The question is whether we’re comfortable with a system where what becomes a moral crusade is dictated by narrative potential and mobilization value instead of by lives saved. If your answer is “that’s just how humans are, stop thinking about it,” say that plainly. Dressing it up as a diagnosis of my intelligence doesn’t make it a serious response.
More people die of age than they do of x, so let's address age?
Or, one is easy intervention the other is mostly natural?
Last time I checked, age wasn’t preventable (yet anyway :)).
My point isn’t “more people die of X, therefore we must fix X first.” It’s that among preventable and policy‑sensitive causes of death, some get turned into moral crusades and others get quietly filed under “engineering and infrastructure.” Guns and heat both belong in that latter category; age doesn’t. The interesting question is why our political and media systems fixate on one and largely ignore the other, given finite attention and resources.
And my answer was pointing to the consideration that some are more preventable than others, as some are seen as more natural and some as more artificial. Which could be a fallacy but also as something partially based
The juxtaposition of arseholes and assholes was cute!
Martin Amis probed the asshole/arsehole distinction in his novel The Information: “It should be said that an asshole is not the same thing as an arsehole. An Atlantic divides them. We are all assholes some of the time, but an arsehole is an arsehole all of the time.”
I’ll have to take a look at The Information, thanks
Yes I enjoyed that a lot.
Many (not all) American comments about air conditioning online have reminded me of many (not all) American comments about soccer during the World Cup. A lot of Americans are rolling up their sleeves and tweeting about how soccer can be made better. In both cases Americans have discovered something about the outside world and become extremely agitated to find other people don't do things the way Americans prefer.
Also, aircon is a talking point in many European nations now in a way it wasn’t 30 years ago due to recurring, climate change-related heatwaves. Accusing “Europe” (a famously homogeneous place, lol) of just neglecting to put aircon into its centuries-old housing stock now that climate change is causing serious health impacts is quite “let them eat cake.”
Rational thinking prevails again.
I’m an American living in the UK with window unit aircon in the bedrooms. I think a lot about guns in America (I would like the US to regulate guns the same way we regulate car ownership and insurance since I think eliminating them entirely is impossible in the US) and aircon in Europe (I think there needs to be widespread government investment in making air conditioning accessible for citizens and workers).
Americans face a lot of taunting, shaming, and disgust at the number of gun deaths in our country from Europeans on a regular basis. School shootings are frequently brought out very early in an argument by Europeans as a way to discredit anything an American has to say about basically any policy or problem. Americans are used to being shamed and silenced by Europeans because our government has failed to protect its citizens from gun violence.
The fact that Europe is struggling with its own, arguably much less complicated to resolve crisis of unnecessary deaths (disallowing air conditioning is not written into any country’s constitution to my knowledge) due to heat related illness, then seems ludicrous to an American. Americans look at these statistics and wonder if European governments are so skilled at looking after their citizens (like we have been repeatedly told) then why are so many people dying from a cause with such a straightforward solution?
Basically I think Americans have a chip on their shoulder and Europeans have a superiority complex and both like to take the piss out of each other for their failings. And that’s why the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths keeps coming up. It’s just a game of gotcha.
Yeah. That will always happen, of course, but it makes me very sad to see it. So many of my most respected thinkers and most loved people are in America.
I am not a fan of it. I feel trapped in the middle. I love both my countries and yeah they aren’t perfect, but we can work on improving them without shaming each other. That would be my preference but it’s rare
I don’t know about that. I think that might be negativity bias. I’m off to the US tomorrow and I anticipate finding people to be warm and welcoming as usual. We shall see.
I should qualify my statement, people being respectful about these topics is pretty rare online but in person people are generally lovely to each other. I hope you have a wonderful trip ☺️
I think your piece misses the most critical point raised by your own commenter, Vincent Bocchinfuso.
You frame the comparison between heat deaths and gun deaths as a "tit-for-tat" argument based on resentment. However, this misses the systemic question: why do some preventable deaths mobilize enormous institutional and media urgency, while others are treated as mere "infrastructure problems"?
It is not a matter of "tit-for-tat" or comparing apples to oranges but a critique of how societies allocate political, economic, and institutional attention. When the U.S. demonstrates systemic disparities in life expectancy, maternal mortality, and social stability compared to Europe, observers aren't necessarily acting out of "resentment" but they are pointing out that the American "system" is failing on its own metrics of success.
Dismissing these critiques as childish or "personally aggrieved" is a convenient way to avoid discussing the hard data of institutional performance. If we care about solving problems rather than winning arguments, we shouldn't pathologize the comparison but examine what those disparities actually say about the health of the respective societies.
No, I just wrote about a different aspect. The one I wanted to address. I did that deliberately. Vincent’s thoughts on why some preventable deaths gain so much traction and others do not are also valuable and I shared them, but I chose to write about a different aspect.
"The freedom not to have air conditioning belongs in a category with other lifestyle choices that can impact health negatively. It belongs on a shelf with smoking, drinking heavily, being obese or leading a sedentary lifestyle."
Mystifying rare miss here, I think. AC may be beneficial in many circumstances, but it is an artificial imposition on the natural order of things; going without is not a vice, any more than going without a car or a telephone, or refusing to eat certain foods. We are discussing this subject because the European majority do without, and the majority of those survive just fine.
AC also carries economic penalties for its installation, operation and maintenance, as well as health penalties which are poorly understood: promoting mold growth, CO2 accumulation in enclosed spaces, and bodily shock on encountering the uncontrolled climate outside. Perhaps these are minor tradeoffs! But they're recognized in many societies, including yours: isn't "fresh air fiend" a Britishism? Surely their fiendishness is ironic!
Well, we're writing in the contexts of the heat deaths. My previous piece was about how many Europeans do not like to artificially chill themselves. It's the elderly mostly who are vulnerable to dying if they do not.
But natural does not indicate healthier. It can be quite healthy to heat and cool ourselves to within our optimal range! And we're used to stepping from warm spaces to cold ones because we have heating in winter. I don't think any health risks have been demonstrated. There are all sorts of narratives.
If those who forgo AC aren't elderly or infirm, then what are the negative health impacts which would compare to those of smoking or drinking to excess? Or do you mean to limit your statement to that population?
Heating is comparable in more ways than one: house fires and carbon monoxide poisoning attributable to heating technologies cause many cases of injury and death. (4,000 annual ER visits from CO poisoning alone, in the UK.) But outliers are not sufficient to characterize heating, or lack thereof, as an unhealthy choice for the individual.
A bit bizarre that lack of AC should be set against gun ownership. The European attitude towards Covid is much more perplexing here. Why should it be OK to accept thousands of unnecessary heat deaths while the threat of Covid deaths triggered massive lockdowns? What’s wrong with Europe for it to accept gutting its economy for a virus but refusing to install AC?
It depends who you are talking when you say “Europe.”
If you mean political leaders the policies for Covid lockdowns were about trying to prevent the spread of a virus which threatened to overwhelm healthcare systems and kill people. The policies on AC are mostly to do with reducing energy use or protecting architecture. The governments themselves are unlikely to give everybody AC and I don’t think America does either. They can be appealed to to make having it cheaper and easier and installing it in state run care homes and hospitals.
If you mean European people, they had a variety of views about Covid lockdowns and this probably does not have much in common with whether or not they install AC. In the Mediterranean countries they are more likely to and in the Northern ones much less so. This is largely because it’s only hot enough to become uncomfortable for a few days a year and they’d rather spend their money on a new shower or upgrade their car.
I was referring to the willingness during Covid to bear economic hardship (and I think lockdowns were popular across the continent, with the notable exception maybe of Sweden) to save lives, whereas that same willingness is entirely absent when it comes to heatwaves. Where are the free ACs including subsidized installation? Wouldn’t lives be saved? I’m just a bit puzzled by the diverging policies when it comes to essentially the same issue
Are you not aware of the climate issue?
Yes of course I am - but listening to the rhetoric at the time of Covid, nothing appeared more important than saving lives. But in regard to heatwaves, it’s not even a topic of discussion
Well, it is, but people who oppose AC for climate reasons say that climate change will cost way more lives and so we need to use other methods of keeping cool. It’s not inconsistent even if you don’t agree with it. I don’t. I think we need to do better with energy and generate more clean energy. My AC is powered by my solar panels.
But mostly, people are not using AC because they’ve not become accustomed to it, don’t feel a need for it and like to feel the seasons. In countries that are nearer the Mediterranean, most people have AC but they still only tend to use it when it’s really hot and then only to bring the temperature down to bearable hot. Like Italy. Melon objects to the EU’s energy guidelines but still has a rule for public buildings only using AC to bring the temperature down to 26 and that’s what most people who have AC do anyway. This is as much as about waste and being able to tolerate things as anything else. The same attitude exists here in the UK but more often it’s about cold because we have way more elderly people die of that. Don’t put your heating on until October. Keep it at 20. Don’t put it on if another jumper will do. Turn it off at night. Etc. Elderly people are most likely to be like this. The last of the post war “Make do and mend. Don’t make a fuss” generation. Have to convince them their bodies can’t regulate temperature so well now.
Well exactly - some AC to keep indoor temperature at 26, for a few days in summer, wouldn’t consume that much energy compared with the benefits? I just wonder here about the choice…
Incidentally, many more people die in Europe from cold than from heat, and who's talking about THAT? Might make this my new hobby horse.
One requires the simple removal of (permission for) an artificial intervention (guns) whilst the other requires the provision of an artificial intervention (a/c).
It's like saying that not providing an irrigation system for an endangered species in an arid landscape is the moral equivalent to allowing and enabling people to kill it.
Too many words for what it is.
Europeans get on their high horse about everything while also letting grandma die in her own sweat. Thats the story
Sure, that’s a story. But reality also exists and I prefer to address that
The symmetry seems to me one of emotions, pride/stubbornness viewed as outmoded and deadly.
Americans are proud of their tradition of owning firearms, and Europeans think that this is stupid and that American policymakers are failing their people.
Europeans are proud of their tradition of doing without AC, and Americans think that this is stupid and that European policymakers are failing their people.
Seems to me like this conflict is being manufactured. Most people do not have this attitude.
Maybe a bit of both. Once they've been given to think about it, I don't think there's much doubt people on a given side of the Atlantic will be disturbed by the other's problems.
"Many Americans have encountered Europeans who took a smug, condescending attitude towards America’s gun crime problem" is at the heart of it
I have yet to see a good response to an argument frequently made by defenders of the 2nd Amendment, “If we criminalised gun ownership, the only people who own guns will be criminals.”
This is exactly the situation in all Europe (possibly not counting military and police) and somehow it manages to not be a problem?
I struggle to see how this can even be considered a legitimate question.
Also, Europeans being condescending towards cowboys are right ;P
The material reality of America is very different from Europe. 80 million Americans own 400 million guns, spread across millions of urban, suburban, and rural square miles, with variations in state and local regulatory regimes and law enforcement capacity. If we criminalized guns tomorrow, it’s hard to imagine how we’d accomplish locating and confiscating even a significant percentage of them.
If someone believes gun ownership in America should be restricted to only police and the military, the legitimate questions start with “Who enforces it, how much will it cost, and how exactly do they plan to implement it?”
I see the logistic problem you are trying to highlight but I'm not convinced. For a start, it is different from the one suggested in the post, which assumes ordinary people will comply with the law and so the only guns circulating will be owned by criminals.
You on the contrary seem to suggest that ordinary people will refuse to comply with the law.
In Italy after WW2 a lot of ex-military and a lot of partisans (freedom fighters) had guns. An order was issued to surrender them after 1945 and most complied (though some retained them, knowing it was illegal). Nobody ever suggested the problem with organized crime derived from those guns, almost all were acquired later through black channels. So it doesn't seem the problem would necessarily pan out as you suggest, even with no need to detail the logistic.
You don't need to detail how you will implement road speed limits control because most will comply, controls are a simple deterrent to those very very few who won't.
“Criticisms of governmental policy making it difficult or expensive to own AC and failing to provide it to vulnerable people at high risk of heat exhaustion are warranted and generally conducted seriously and thoughtfully. People who are concerned with that debate are not generally trying to make arguments comparing heat deaths to gun deaths.”
https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/europes-resistance-to-ac-is-driving?r=k7sg9&utm_medium=ios
There are people who are thoughtfully doing both.