Three thousand dead in France from a heat wave with an average that barely crawled above 100 degrees Fahrenheit? In a country of only 60 million, those sound like Third World numbers. Compared to the 1995 Chicago heat wave, which killed nearly 500 inside the urban sprawl, France's death toll percentage is twice that. Stories written about a "race for the last fan" don't help the overwhelming impression of desperation and chaos over there:
Some restaurants and offices have central air-conditioning, known to Parisians as clim (pronounced cleem), short for climatisation. But a surprising number do not. The French will tell you that wild temperature swings are bad for you. Air-conditioners, they say, cause sore throats and cultivate germs.
Temperature heights this summer have been reasonable, so I've managed to keep air conditioning off; even so, I have it in reserve should the humidity and heat decide to play for keeps.
UPDATE: Two-thirds of those killed by the heat died in Paris alone. It's not like a Third World disaster: this is a Third World disaster.
UPDATE II: Third World, 1; France, 0. Last year, a heat wave killed less than 1,000 Indians - out of a billion countrywide. Could the French have been completely unprepared for a twenty-degree rise in average temperatures? ...Er, that's rhetorical.