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Comment by ValleZ | Hacker News Reader

It was fairly impossible to find a restaurant in Paris that had an AC not so long time ago. It’s totally not an issue in states.

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There are still hardly any, Paris, July '26.

Heck. The San Francisco Bay Area was largely AC free in my youth (except maybe Walnut Creek).

That's because Europeans are more of nonconformists and could deal with some 7 to 10 super hot days in a year. It's now weeks in a row.

Europeans? Nonconformist? That was funny.

If anything, the AC train wreck is caused by the society being incredibly conformist and conservative, trying to cling to the world of the 20th century that no longer exists.

Europeans are more accepting of being sweaty during the day.

During a couple days in a year. Yes, that's the nonconformity I speak of.

Europe could never "handle" it. Even in 1990-2001, Europe averaged about 3 heat-related deaths per 100,000: https://www.statista.com/chart/36367/average-annual-heat-rel..., compared to about 1 per 100,000 in the Americas at the time.

3 per 100,000 is a lot. That's higher than the homicide rates in New England and the upper midwest of the U.S.

Are these numbers actually based on the same way of counting heat-related deaths? As far as I have seen Europe looks at excess mortality, while the US only counts deaths explicitly attributed to heat-related issues. If there are different methods in use, I wouldn't be surprised if this accounted for a lot of the difference.

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