How extreme heat is exposing extreme inequality

Call it a tale of two heatwave experiences. As brutally hot conditions brought much of western Europe to its knees, an American writer living in Paris asserted that , for many, the heat was not “nearly as apocalyptic” as most media were suggesting. He said he had yet to buy a fan, instead relying on closed shutters, misting sessions and open windows in the evening to keep his ground-level flat cool. Less than 20km away, in a southern suburb of Paris, Aboubakar, 60, wept as he explained that temperatures had climbed as high as 40C inside his fourth-floor flat. “I’m suffocating,” he told the Guardian . “I can’t afford to buy a fan. There are no shutters on my flat. At night I can’t sleep, it’s like a furnace.” It’s a glimpse of a disparity that researchers in Europe and beyond have increasingly sought to highlight as the climate crisis intensifies. As scorching summer temperatures become the new normal, those living in poverty are disproportionately bearing the brunt. Julio Díaz Jiménez, a professor at Madrid’s Carlos III health institute, told me when I first started to dig into this: “It’s common sense. …