In sweaty Europe, air conditioning is no way to cope with the heat . The percentage of homes with air-conditioning in France remains below 5, in Germany below 2 percent and in Austria below 1 percent.

McClatchy reports:

Europeans abhor the idea of air conditioning, noting, rather smugly, that it’s a huge energy guzzler that helps drive the production of the greenhouse gases blamed for driving global temperatures up.

Travel websites are filled with stories – mostly from women – of how unpleasant the United States is with its artificial cold, and stories are legion of Europeans who return ill.

In uber-green Germany, a recent government website offered sweating citizens the advice of turning on a fan and only 2 percent of the homes are air conditioned. Still, there are those that wonder if citizens really need to live so uncomfortably.

Eventually, American progressives will want you to live without air conditioning. You can count on it.