Air conditioning is evil. It’s bad for the environment. Instead it’s better to let thousands die in heat waves.

A 2003 heat wave killed 15,000 people in France. And, in response, the authorities have deployed Chalex, a database of vulnerable people who will get a call offering them cooling advice.

The advice consists of taking cold showers and sticking their feet in saucepans of cold water.

Desperate Frenchmen trying to get into any body of water they can have led to a 30% rise in drownings. The dozens of people dead are casualties of the environmentalist hatred of air conditioners.

Only 5% of French households have air conditioning. Even in response to the crisis, the authorities are only deploying temporary air conditioning to kindergartens.

The 2003 heat wave killed 7,000 people in Germany. And, today, only 3% of German households have air conditioning. Germany’s Ministry of the Environment refused to back air conditioning as a response to global warming.

Temperatures in Dusseldorf hit 105 degrees. Officials in Dusseldorf had recently rejected proposals to install air conditioning systems because they’re bad for the environment.

The climate action head at Germany’s Institute for Applied Ecology explained that air conditioning wouldn’t work because there’s not much wind during heat waves, and the country can’t end reliance on coal and run air conditioners at the same time. You can have air conditioners or save the planet.

But not both.

But not everyone in Europe is ready to die for the environment.

In Spain, AC penetration has reached 41 percent, according to a study last year of homes for sale and rent.

In Spain, researchers determined that deaths related to extreme heat had fallen over four decades despite rising temperatures during that span. One of the reasons? Increased AC use.

Claudia Rojas, a psychologist who lives in Madrid, reasoned that if everybody used the technology, temperatures would only “get worse” because of the emissions. She’s tried to brave the summer by opening the windows at night, taking cold showers, and eating lots of gazpacho.

Humanity is choosing survival over the cult of global warming. Cultists however can eat lots of Gazpacho.

This summer, some of the sensitive questions about the AC future fed into a political battle in France, where Marine Le Pen, the top figure in the French far right, called for a “great air-conditioning plan.” Part of the implicit critique is that the left had been valuing environmental concerns over the safety of the country.

Marine Tondelier, meanwhile, head of the Green party, scorned the idea, saying France needed to focus on “greening” cities and making buildings more energy efficient.

A recent leader in the conservative Le Figaro supported air conditioning, but the left-wing Libération newspaper, in response, called AC “an environmental aberration”

It’s time to make environmentalists an aberration.