Give it a few years and a few more heat waves, all the people living in old buildings which are too expensive to insulate will be getting ac. There’s no getting around the basic need for fresh air, no matter old habits and environmental costs. I’m sticking to ice packs and cold showers for now, don’t know for how much longer though.
As far as Paris is concerned, we’re actually extremely ill-prepared for high heats. Parisians have the highest risk of heat-related death in Europe. Hardware stores are packed with AC units every summer now because people are forced to start using them. Luckily we’ve had terrible weather so far this summer, fingers crossed it stays that way.
In France there are plenty of people who ask for Dafalgan or neurofen but have no idea what paracetamol or ibuprofen are.
Hey, you leave them and their strawwomen alone!
I’m franco-american, living in france, and I regularly get people telling me they’re sorry for insulting me for being american. It’s so ingrained in the culture here to shit on americans it’s something of a knee-jerk reaction. I get it, america’s the hegemon, we’re the big baddy, I just wish that didn’t spill over into a kind of xenophobia that people are so comfortable with they regularly catch themselves being openly insulting to people they call their friends.
I wouldn’t say it’s surprisingly easy. It’s possible, but it comes with substantial costs. Paris is throwing a ton of money at some of the solutions you’ve mentioned and the results are meager at best. Hopefully they’ll improve as time goes on.