The 2026 Heat Wave in Europe

As of June 29, 2026, the death toll from the current heat wave in Europe has risen above 1,300.

Some Chinese citizens on social media are posting videos of pigs and dogs with multiple air conditioning units, juxtaposing the situation. It is being fairly often commented that a Chinese pig or dog live better than a European.

On the other side, some Europeans are arguing that the global warming caused by carbon emissions from China and the United States is the cause for their heat wave.

In the interest of being productive, lets look at why this happened, lessons that could have been learned previously, and just do a general analysis of the situation.

As for why this happened, heat waves occur because things get hot (hazard), and people have a maximum temperature they can sustainably live in (vulnerability). Things get hot because of a wide variety of reasons related to both weather and climate. 

It is an extremely complex system, climate change is related and affects the hazard side of the equation, but it does not speak directly to the vulnerability.

A look back at history will be highly illuminating and will provide context. In 2003 there was another heat wave. This was the hottest summer recorded in Europe since 1540.

The estimated death toll from the 2003 heat wave was more than 70,000 people. In France the elderly disproportionately died because of a few reasons:

1. In that culture, elderly people tend to live alone and are not get checked up on as frequently as in other cultures.

2. They, along with infants, children, and people with pre-existing health issues, are more vulnerable to this hazard.

The deaths in France were so great that the coroner was unable to process the dead fast enough. The effects of rapidly deteriorating corpses creating a secondary public health crisis was a significant issue. 

Commercial ice cream and meat freezers were emptied to store the dead to lessen this risk.

There was also a massive shortfall in wheat, and grape harvests, causing food shortages and economic issues.

This is to say, that it has been 20 years since Europe got a serious re-education as to the significance of extreme temperatures as a disaster category.

Here is a list of the sorts of policies that were put in place to address this risk:

• Heat and health warning systems.

• Vulnerable resident registries

• Cooling advice for care homes

• Emergency homeless support

• Increased staff in hospitals during heat alerts

• Cooling equipment stockpiling

• General public awareness on keeping homes cool and staying hydrated

• More greenspace including planting trees

• Installing reflective or ‘cool’ roofs

• Increased shade in public areas

• Building insulation and ventilation improvements

• Reducing the number of paved surfaces

• Work hour reductions during heat waves

Notice that none of these things directly ask for increased power consumption or directly reference air conditioning.

Here are some other pieces of background information that will be relevant to this analysis.

In the last 10 years, global energy production of renewable electricity has doubled. While this has happened, the percentage of global energy that comes from fossil fuels has increased.

This is because the total global demand for energy is increasing at a rate that far outpaces the rate at which renewable energy can be brought online, and only fossil fuels can be brought online quick enough to meet this demand.

Climate change/global warming, is considered to be the number one threat or risk to the human population according to disaster risk reduction. Europe has long adopted a strategy of reducing electricity usage. 

Essentially, even though the demand among their population increases, Europe either does not build electricity or chooses to build it at a significantly lower rate. This raises the price of electricity and prices a greater percentage of the population out of electricity use.

Further analysis, the reality is that much of Europe has been priced out of being able to reasonably mitigate a massive heat wave.

Splash pads or access to pools have had mixed news about them as since June 18, at least 74 people have died due to drowning in France. The heat wave has been blamed for this. In actuality around 1,000 people die from drowning every year in France, with this being seasonal, so this falls within the expected range for what is normal in a non-heat wave year.

Here are some of the most common questions as to what could or should be done to address the heat wave, and the general response to them:

Why don’t Europeans have air conditioning?

The wealthy people do. A combination of energy prices being too high and a lack of a big air conditioner industry makes them scarce. If an air conditioning company expects they will not do well in a market because the energy price is too high for their customers to buy them, they will not as aggressively enter said market. 

Why don’t they have enough power for these air conditioners?

A few reasons. The lack of power production above is one, they haven’t built enough power. They also haven’t built up their grid enough, it is one thing to produce it, but their power grid couldn’t handle all the power that these air conditioners would require and would crash. There is also the issue of older building infrastructure, they need to rebuild and/or retrofit a huge number of buildings.

Why haven’t they updated their old buildings?

This is a factor of both the sheer size of the issue, and limitations due to regulations and safety. Even though they have had since 2003 to know this is an issue, there are a lot of buildings in Europe, and this is a massive infrastructure undertaking. In many countries, Canada included, licenced trades people, like electricians need to be the ones doing the work. There aren’t enough professionals in the country to upgrade all these buildings that fast.

If a ridiculous amount of money was thrown at this issue and a huge percentage of the population was in the relevant skilled trades, this problem would be addressable.

Why not produce more power and upgrade the grid?

The overall climate change strategy they adopted has been to reduce energy consumption, this goes against that goal. Essentially, one trades the lives of individuals in the short and medium term for survival in the long term. This is the idea behind the decision that was made.

What do you think they should do?

This is complicated, but here are some other things that I would consider in their position.

1. The largest emitters are economic and military superpowers that are going to do whatever they want anyways. In the current political climate, the following appear to be true:

China and the United States don’t really care if other countries are also emitting.

The superpowers of the world are more concerned with getting technologically ahead of each other than climate change. 

China cares about climate change, but generally within the context of getting technologically ahead as this is a growing market.

2. Getting further behind superpowers technologically weakens ones negotiating position. This likely results in a country being forced into whatever the superpower does anyways.

While this may occur from the superpower demanding certain actions or making a different countries economy dependant on it, it is more likely that for Europe this pressure will come from its public.

Europeans will protest, riot, and violently overthrow their governments if they deem it necessary. If the European quality of life gets visibly too far behind people in the United States and China, the public will force a course correction one way or the other. In most countries, the politicians will cave before things get really violent.

3. Technological advancements in power production are really important.

The public is going to demand increased power consumption. It is a matter of when, not if. In order to maintain a climate change agenda, technological advancement is absolutely required unless a country is ready to get extremely draconian.

So, in general I would recommend three things:

-Massively increase investment into the trades so that the trained professionals exist to upgrade this infrastructure fast enough.

-Build power, especially power that facilitates the research of improving power.

-Build energy transportation and distribution infrastructure in preparation for the increased power production.

-Take a serious look at low technological readiness level (TR) research and start throwing money at it. If humanity needs a science project that is going to revolutionize our energy industry we need to fund the science projects.

Learn more and watch the video here.

Vezina is the CEO of Prepared Canada Corp. and is the author of Continuity 101. He can be reached at info@prepared.ca.