Europe’s populist parties know how to make the most of a crisis. When I was in Germany covering the far right, they jumped on the European debt crisis. Then they jumped on the migrant crisis. And then they jumped on Covid, each time attacking mainstream elites for their response.
Is the climate crisis next? It might seem a stretch, given that climate change, which contributed to record heat across the continent last week, is being driven by the oil and gas industries these parties tend to support. But today, my colleagues Michael Shear and Jeanna Smialek write about the politics of air-conditioning — and how right-wing parties are already trying to capitalize on the fallout from last week’s heat emergencies.
How to support fossil fuels in a heat wave
By Michael D. Shear and Jeanna Smialek
It was a crisp 12 degrees Celsius in Aberdeen, on the northeast coast of Scotland, earlier this month when Kemi Badenoch, the leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, once again championed the country’s fossil fuel industry.
“The war on oil and gas must end,” she insisted, prompting applause from supporters in the port city, a major hub for petroleum extraction in the North Sea. “We need to get Britain drilling again.”
Eight days later, thermostats across southern England and Wales spiked. Temperatures in London reached 35 degrees. Schools closed and trains were canceled. Some hospitals halted elective procedures. The opening session of London Climate Action Week — focused on the ways governments can mitigate the risks of extreme heat — was called off after Britain’s national weather service issued a “red warning” for extreme heat.
For politicians like Badenoch, the increasingly intense heat presents a challenge. How do they reconcile their support for polluting energy sources that contribute to global warming with the reality of a planet that already feels as if it’s burning up?
The politics of air-conditioning
For starters, they talk a lot about air-conditioning.
The installation of air-conditioning units in European homes, schools, public buildings and hospitals is a short-term fix that almost everyone agrees is necessary.
And talking about it serves a few purposes. Air-conditioning highlights the failures of various governments to help their countries adapt to extreme heat so far. It’s also a cultural issue to use against environmental groups and Europe’s Green parties, which often criticize the use of air-conditioners for its high energy demands.
And it allows far-right politicians to avoid saying much about the longer-term underlying cause of the heat waves: rising greenhouse gas emissions.
“If I am elected president, I will put into place a massive air-conditioning plan,” Marine Le Pen, the leader of the National Rally party, pledged on Friday, “starting in places with the most vulnerable populations.”
Le Pen argues that air-conditioning units do not exacerbate global warming, saying that “when environmentalists don’t want something, they twist the studies, they pull things out of context.” (New air-conditioning units have become greener in recent years but do contribute to climate change by guzzling electricity, which, if it doesn’t come from renewable sources, contributes to the emissions that warm the planet.)
In the Belgian city of Ghent, run mostly by left-of-center politicians, the municipal website last week discouraged the use of air-conditioners, saying that “the best air-conditioner is a tree” and advising citizens to use fans and to request a free tree to plant outside their houses.
The city later removed wording that read “avoid air-conditioners,” replacing it with the phrase “cool smartly.” A spokesman for the mayor noted that Ghent was not against air-conditioners and that it had installed 30 portable units into day care centers. “Health always comes first” in a heat wave, he said.
But by then, a right-wing member of the Flemish Parliament, Maurits Vande Reyde, had already seized on the recommendations on social media.
“It is absurd that all governments in our country, under pressure from left-green mumbo-jumbo, advise against the use of air-conditioning,” he wrote on Tuesday. “How many deaths would the government already have on its conscience with this kind of absurd advice?”
Others have tried to tap into economic concerns and to focus attention on burdensome regulations.
Andrew Bowie, who oversees energy policy for the British Conservatives, said his party supported the transition to cleaner energy. But he added, “It’s a transition, and it makes no sense at all to pursue net-zero targets while inflicting higher energy bills on households, deindustrializing and losing the potential tax revenue from exploiting our North Sea oil and gas resources.”
Potent fuel
While climate change politics in the U.S. have become more divisive during President Trump’s two terms in office, in Europe there’s still broad support for taking action to tackle global warming.
In a survey last year by the E.U.’s public opinion service, about 85 percent of respondents said they considered climate change a serious problem for the world and action against it a public-health priority.
And a wide body of research on European voters shows that extreme weather events can influence politics: A 2025 study found that abnormally high temperatures in Germany had delivered a meaningful increase in support for the Green Party, for example.
But such research also showed that extreme weather events did not guarantee a backlash against climate-skeptic parties.
Extreme weather events like floods and heat tend to leave governments scrambling to respond. These scrambles become fertile ground for voter frustration. And to populist parties on the right, voter frustration — regardless of what’s driving it — can be a potent fuel. And so the politics of heat going forward may be shaped by two questions: Will governments get better at adapting? And will voters focus on the short-term politics of air-conditioning — or the long-term politics of what’s making the world so hot?
Related: The extreme heat gripping Western Europe eased over the weekend, though some countries in Central and Eastern Europe are bracing for more dangerous days to come.
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