Naomi O'Leary

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57 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 5 Jul

Naomi O'Leary’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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The Pat Kenny Show · Europe’s relentless heatwaves: What’s next? · 5 Jul 2026 podcast

And some people aren't.

and then their bodies overheat and it can actually lead to death.

So in Paris you had a remarkably high number of heart attacks, way above the norm.

And emergency services were really busy bringing everyone into hospital.

Lots of public events were cancelled to make sure that the hospitals weren't overwhelmed because so many people were running into difficulty with the heat.

So it's very serious.

Across Europe, the figure I think is from, it's not all of Europe, but it's so far in France, Belgium, the Netherlands, it's about 3,800 excess deaths from that heat wave.

And we are expecting more heat waves to come.

It is very hard on people's bodies and it's physically difficult and the cities are not set up for it.

So there's been a really interesting shift that I've observed in the debate there.

So the idea of air conditioning was very politically divisive, partly because the far right, the hard right, had adopted it as a cause celebre and they were calling for air conditioning for all kind of way before this, which kind of forces other parties to take positions accordingly.

But the left wing and the Greens in general had been cautious about air conditioning because, as you mentioned, the energy demand that

it has, but also because in cities in particular, it's very counterproductive because the cool air being pumped into buildings is counteracted by hot air being pumped out.

And there were studies that showed that it would worsen, for example, the heat in Paris during a major heatwave by two degrees if it was widely adopted because of so much hot air being pumped out onto the streets.

And that obviously has a very unequal impact.

It depends on whether you can afford this thing or not.

So it's been contentious for ages.

But I've noticed a big shift in that debate.

Like you said, Marine Tondelier, who's the head of the Green Party in France, was on the television saying, you look at the Green Party, we wanted to prevent this from happening.

Our policy was to prevent climate change, but it's here that hasn't been successful.

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