In Aberdeen, Scotland, it was 54 degrees eight days ago. In southern England and Wales this week, temperatures are pushing toward 100. London canceled a Climate Action Week event because it was too hot to hold a climate event. That's not satire. That actually happened.

So naturally, the New York Times responded to Europe's deadly heat wave by publishing a piece asking whether air conditioning is basically a right-wing conspiracy.

The article — titled "Europe's Deadly Heat Wave: A Jolt for Climate Action, or Just for A.C.?" — was reported from London and Brussels by Michael D. Shear and Jeanna Smialek. The premise is that Europeans embracing air conditioning represents a dangerous cultural surrender to the political right rather than a common-sense response to people literally dying from the heat.

The Times frames the growing demand for A.C. across Europe as a tension between climate idealism and survival. In Belgium, the city of Ghent's official municipal guidance advises residents that "the best air-conditioner is a tree." Which is very helpful when it's 98 degrees and you live in a fourth-floor apartment with no yard.

Mauris Vande Reyde, a right-wing member of the Flemish Parliament, called the green establishment out directly on social media: "It is absurd that all governments in our country, under pressure from left-green mumbo-jumbo, advise against the use of air-conditioning." The Times treats this as evidence of a worrying political trend. Most functioning adults would call it a reasonable observation.

Kemi Badenoch, leader of Britain's Conservative Party, told GB News it's "important that we do what we can to tackle climate change" but that current approaches are not "actually sorting anything out. All they have done is sent jobs and emissions to other countries." That's the kind of nuanced position that gets you labeled dangerous in a New York Times newsroom.

Chris Anderson, head of climate risk and resilience at the charity Practical Action, inadvertently summarized the whole absurdity: "There is irony in the fact that a London Climate Action Week event had to be canceled due to extreme heat in a temperate, wealthy country." There is irony. Just not the kind Anderson intended.

The underlying argument from the Times is familiar. Technology that makes life bearable is suspect if the wrong people support it. Cooling your home during a heat wave isn't adaptation — it's ideological surrender. The correct response, apparently, is to sweat nobly while waiting for a tree to grow large enough to shade your apartment building.

What the piece never quite addresses is what Europeans are supposed to do right now. Not in 2040 when green infrastructure might theoretically catch up, but this week, when hospitals are filling up and elderly residents are collapsing in cities built for mild summers. The gap between 54 degrees in Aberdeen and 100 degrees in London is eight days. Government guidance suggesting a tree will handle that isn't policy. It's a prayer.

The Times found a continent full of people deciding they'd rather not die of heatstroke and concluded the real emergency was their politics.