I’ve been traveling, which means I’ve been scrolling more than usual. And while I was aware that Europe is just generally lacking when compared to the U.S. (as evidenced by the reactions of Europeans visiting here for the World Cup), and I’d heard jokes about the lack of air-conditioning (and even windows that actually open) across the pond, I genuinely had no idea how insane things actually were.
Did you know that hospitals in Germany do not have air conditioning?
ICU doctors are sounding the alarm, as critical patients' families are being asked to bring ice packs to help keep them cool after heart surgeries.
I’m sorry… what?
How in the year of our Lord, 2026, is this actually real?
France just had its hottest days ever recorded, and a lot of people have died—something like a thousand more deaths than normal in just a few days. A lot of them were old people, dying in hot apartments because they had no way to cool down.
That's awful.
It’s especially awful when the fix for people dying in the heat is air conditioning. That's it. That's the whole solution.
It's not some far-off technology we're waiting on. It's a window unit from the hardware store. It's the reason people aren’t dying from the heat in Phoenix when it hits 115 in July every year.
About 90% of us here in America have AC in our homes. In Germany it's something like 6%.
Seeing the mass suffering of basically all of Europe, you'd think every government over there would be falling all over themselves right now to get cooling into people's homes, especially for the elderly and the people in hospitals and care homes... Right?
But no. In fact, some of the German public broadcasters spent this week pushing what was basically an anti-air-conditioning campaign.
One of them ran a graphic with the message that AC cools you down but heats up the planet. They’re warning that everybody getting AC might raise global temperatures by five hundredths of one degree.
By the year 2050.
Let that sit for a minute. They are telling people—old people, sick people, people who are genuinely at risk of dying—that they should suffer through it, maybe even die, to prevent five hundredths of a degree of warming twenty-five years from now. And people are just going along with it!
That’s legitimately insane.
Of course, the people making the rules aren't the ones sweating.
While regular Germans were being told that cooling their bedroom was selfish, the European Commission building in Brussels shut off the AC on floors one through seven—and kept it running up on floor eight and above where the “important people” work.
France’s environment minister Monique Barbut (her official title is: Minister for Ecological Transition, Biodiversity, and International Negotiations on Climate and Nature of France) thought this was an appropriate statement in light of 1,200 French deaths in a single day:
"I am horrified by people who say that we just need to install air conditioners everywhere… Do you think that by installing air conditioners everywhere, we will prevent forest fires or animal deaths? This is not an adaptation to global warming,"
I suspect that her office AC continues to hum.
A classic, “rules for thee but not for me.”
Some leaders are even blaming the United States for the heat-related deaths.
Charlie Kirk called what it seems many in Europe are suffering from, “toxic empathy.” It’s the idea that something that feels good and caring (like being good stewards of the planet) can be twisted into a justification for things that are actually pretty monstrous.
Caring about the environment is good. Nobody's against a healthy planet. But somewhere along the line that good feeling got turned into a reason to look an old woman in the eye and tell her the noble thing to do is die quietly; to do her part in saving her grandkids from a possible 0.05% temp increase in 25 years.
That's not caring. I don't know what to call it, but it isn't that.
What’s maddening is that it doesn't even work on its own terms.
Say every single European bought an AC unit tomorrow. Europe is already a small and shrinking piece of the whole emissions picture. The EU puts out around 7% of the world's CO2, and that number is already way down (something like 35%!) from where it was in 1990. We're around 13% and dropping too. Meanwhile, China alone is putting out about a third of the world's emissions, and India's climbing fast, and none of them are about to give up their air conditioning to make anybody feel better.
(Nor, I would argue, should they!)
So the German grandma is supposed to die in her apartment for a fraction of a degree, while the actual sources of emissions hum right along. Of course it's not even a real sacrifice. It's a ritual. It doesn't fix anything. It just makes someone feel righteous while someone else's grandmother dies.
This is the kind of thing I think about a lot when it comes to raising the next generation.
There is a very real, very powerful, toxic empathy-cult operating at the highest levels of government and media all over the world. And because indoctrinating their own children (if they’re even having children) isn’t impactful enough, they are laser-focused on indoctrinating yours and mine.
The only real defense against any of it is a strong family unit, and parents who talk about real things to their kids.
It’s raising kids who can hear a really nice-sounding argument and still ask the smart follow-up questions like: okay, but what does this actually cost, and who has to pay it, and does it even do what you say it does? A kid who can run that little check in their head—who can notice that five hundredths of a degree in 2050 is not worth Grandma's life this week—is a kid nobody can talk into something terrible just by dressing it up in haughty language or moral superiority.
That's the kind of clear thinking that actually saves lives and makes the world a better place.
It's also a big part of why I love this country, warts and all. America was built on this stubborn idea that you—the actual individual person—matter more than some grand collective plan.
More than the state's projects, more than whatever the people in the cool offices and private jets have decided everyone else should give up this year.
We're kicking off our America 250 Mega Sale today in celebration of America’s 250th.
That means 25% off sitewide with code USA250.
And the timing couldn’t be better, because Volume 3 of America's History (1791-1849) is finally shipping too.
If you've been waiting on it, it's here!
And if you haven't started our award-winning History series at all, this is a great week to jump in, because the whole series is built around teaching kids the actual story of where this country came from and why its ideas—messy and human and argued-about as they were—still hold up today.
We don't celebrate this country because it's perfect. We celebrate it because at its core, the message has always been that your life has value, that your rights to life, liberty, and property are yours and should be protected, and that each person having the freedom to think and move and act in their own best interest is what gives us all the best chance at human flourishing and prosperity.
I think that's worth teaching our kids, and I think it's worth celebrating.
Especially now.
— Connor
