The cooling crisis: How climate change forced air conditioning onto France's agenda

For a country that's never needed — and often looked down on — air conditioning, this has been a summer of reckoning. As France suffers through successive extreme heatwaves, AC has become a political issue too. Transcript SCOTT SIMON, HOST: Climate scientists say that Europe is heating faster than any other continent, and that makes formerly temperate cities like Paris unbearably hot. And it's forcing the French to reconsider something they had thought was unneeded and that they dislike - air conditioning. NPR's Eleanor Beardsley reports.ELEANOR BEARDSLEY, BYLINE: France has been at the epicenter of Europe's hottest summer ever. Paris summer temperatures used to hover in the mid-80s. Three consecutive heat waves this year have already pushed the thermometer over 100 degrees Fahrenheit for days on end.(CROSSTALK)BEARDSLEY: Desperate shoppers fought over air-conditioning units and fans at a Paris DIY store in this scene shown on news channel TF1. Far-right leader Marine Le Pen wasted no time capitalizing on the deadly heat despite her party's skepticism over climate change.(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)MARINE LE PEN: (Speaking French).BEARDSLEY: "It's absurd to let people die in t...