00:00Professor François Germain is the lead author at the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate
00:05Change and he joins me now from Paris.
00:09So France has been hit by extreme heat all week.
00:12Why has air conditioning suddenly become this big political issue?
00:17Because clearly France is under-equipped because France appears ill-prepared and clearly the
00:25buildings are not fit to sustain the heat and therefore obviously air conditioning appears
00:30like an immediate solution as a matter of emergency, especially given that the death toll is rising.
00:38I think that for years air conditioning was considered as superfluous, unnecessary given
00:46France's climate, but not that the climate is changing, many are reckoning that air conditioning
00:53is becoming a necessity.
00:55France of course has never been as enthusiastic, has it, about air conditioning as some other
01:01countries.
01:02Is that attitude beginning to change, do you think?
01:05Clearly France was not enthusiastic about air conditioning and France is also always
01:11cautious about technological solutions.
01:15This being said I think that the mood of the country is evolving quickly because many realise
01:23that air conditioning is able to save lives and that it is a priority for public health
01:28and that the environmental impact after all are not that big because France's electricity
01:34mix is low carbon based on nuclear and renewables and that therefore the greenhouse gas emissions
01:40are limited.
01:41Of course there is the issue of the urban heat that is released in the streets in public space,
01:47but at the end of the day cars produce the same effect and nobody thinks about forbidding
01:53car traffic during heatwave.
01:55I mean it's a debate isn't it about comfort, but it's also a debate that brings in issues
02:00such as health, inequality and I suppose how France is adapting to climate change.
02:07Really, and I think many realise that adaptation these days is not just a matter of climate policy
02:14or environmental policies, that it is also a matter of public health policies.
02:18And it is of course in that regard that the debate on air conditioning is so important.
02:23Of course it remains an individual solution which means that it creates inequalities regarding
02:29access to AC in society and clearly air conditioning cannot replace collective solutions like the
02:35digitalisation of cities or the transformations of urban planning.
02:40But I think we need to combine individual solutions and collective solutions.
02:44The problem is that the state has no money for the latter.
02:48The state has empty pockets at the moment and therefore it will be extremely difficult to find funding for adaptation.
02:54And politicians calling for schools and public buildings to have compulsory air conditioning installed.
03:01Is that a sensible response in your opinion or is that simplifying the issue?
03:06That seems to be a sensible response, but that does not cover the full response.
03:13I think that is one element of the response, but we shouldn't be naive and thinking that just putting
03:19air conditioning in all public buildings will suffice to adapt France.
03:23That is part of the, that is part of the answer.
03:25That is not the full answer, not the silver bullet.
03:28Professor Germain, thank you very much for talking to me.
03:31My pleasure.
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