Some like it hot!
The club of heat enthusiasts is shrinking. Faster than expected. Europe is sweating as never before. June 2026 delivered the most sweltering heat wave ever recorded.
That means roughly 150 million people from Denmark to Spain are buckling under the weight of the sun. A dress rehearsal, says the WHO. Is there a main performance still to come?
Yes. There is. But the programme has other pieces. There are ways to escape the heat. They are not sitting in a drawer. They are already running.
Today’s programme: First Aid.
In the short term, this is not about elegance — it is about getting through. Libraries, community centres, churches offer cool rooms fitted with air conditioning units that run during the day on solar power from their own rooftops. Or bubbling drinking fountains, mobile shade sails over schoolyards and markets, some even clad in solar film. And let us not forget balcony power stations feeding the fan without provoking the electricity bill.
Tomorrow’s programme: Two Birds, One Panel.
Over the next one to five years, improvisation can grow into infrastructure. Solar roofs over squares, parking lots, bus stops, and even streams and rivers generate power above and shade below. Two birds, one panel. France already requires by law that large parking lots be covered with solar panels. Coolness can also arrive from a distance. From lakes and rivers, for instance. Geneva cools entire neighbourhoods with lake water, Zürich does the same, Paris cools the Louvre with the Seine — yes, the river — at a fraction of the electricity a conventional air conditioner demands. Not to forget reversible heat pumps that heat in winter and cool in summer. Battery storage swallows the midday surplus — so that the tropical night becomes bearable too. At night the wind tends to make itself known more readily, preferring to wander through the dark. Sun and wind are shift workers. Day and night.
Coming the Day After Tomorrow: Trees Are Shadeful.
Think long, act fast — that is the watchword. Cities must be reimagined. Unseal the ground. Asphalt stores what nobody ordered. Light-coloured roofs reflect the incoming heat, green facades cool, sponge cities swallow rain and return a little coolness. But the crown of cooling is the tree — the oldest air conditioner in the world. It needs almost no maintenance and runs free of charge at full capacity, always. As the saying goes: people plant trees in whose shade they will never sit. That is what makes a society great and worth living in.
Out of coal, oil and gas, and into an energy system built on sun, wind and water. Because the best protection against heat remains the kind that never orders the heat in the first place. What speaks against it, really? Let us ask the till.
Ah, the Till Is Ringing Every Second.
The question of all questions remains: who is supposed to pay for the new infrastructure? A fair point. And the answer lies surprisingly close. While Europe was sweating, Oxfam did the sums: six Western oil companies — Exxon, Shell, Chevron, BP, TotalEnergies, ConocoPhillips — will pocket around 94 billion dollars in profit this year. That is $2,967 per second. Per second! Roughly the price of a balcony power station, fan included. Tick. Another one. Tick. Another one. And Saudi Aramco earned 93 billion all by itself last year — a year the industry described as weak.
The bitter punchline behind all this: the more unstable the world, the fuller the tills. Crises drive the oil price, the oil price drives the profit. You earn from the fever you helped cause. So who should pay? Perhaps that is the wrong question. The right one: who has already cashed in?
None of this is science fiction. Everything exists, works, makes financial sense. What is missing is not the technology. What is missing is not even the money — it arrives by the second, just into the wrong tills. What is missing is the pace. The WHO called it a dress rehearsal. Fine. Then now would be the moment to rebuild the set — in three acts: today, tomorrow, the day after.
The money for the scenery? Tick. Tick. Tick.
