A Western Suicide

By Robert M. Levy

Dang, it’s hot today! As I write this column in beautiful Pinehurst, North Carolina, it is 97° outside. It is predicted to be 99° tomorrow and 100° the following day. With the expected 55% relative humidity, that 100° day could feel like 124° F. But I don’t care. Like 90% of all buildings in the United States, my home is air-conditioned. My car is air-conditioned. My sentiments are the same as comedian Yakov Smirnoff, “What a country!”

That’s not the case elsewhere. Within the European Union, only 20% of homes have air-conditioning. It is a choice which many EU residents defend. The Deputy Mayor of Paris, Audrey Pulvar, recently charged that American air conditioning promotes global warming and is therefore incompatible with continued life on this planet.

Of course, I disagree. I recently found out that in the morgues of Paris and throughout Europe, there are piles of bodies dead from heat exposure. The bodies prove that the Deputy Mayor is an idiot.

In the EU, summer heat causes of death average of 13.5 people for every 100,000 inhabitants. In the United States, that average is 3.5. The lack of air conditioning is responsible for the difference.

So, why not just air-condition Europe like the USA? They can’t. Air conditioners need electricity, and Europe doesn’t generate enough to keep its citizens alive. Moreover, the electricity the EU does have is so expensive that residents couldn’t afford to cool their homes with it in the first place.

The European Union generates on average 6170 kilowatt-hours per person each year. In the United States, that is 12,670Kwh per person, or more than double that of Europe. Meanwhile, the average cost of electricity in Europe is 25 cents per kilowatt-hour. It is 16.5 cents in the US.

According to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, in the United States, disposable income is approximately $71,300 for each person, including public education. In Europe it is $35,100 (figures already converted from euros) Even pre-tax income in the United States on a per person basis is 30% to 40% higher than that of Europe. In essence, the socialist economics of Europe is less compatible with prosperity and more accepting of death.

Much of Europe fell in love with socialism and the theory of human-caused global warming. These ideas are also the twin pillars of progressive politicians in the United States. As such, we must learn from Europe to avoid similar progressivism and similar deaths in America.

In Europe, the use of energy is discouraged to “save the planet.” To accomplish that, less energy is produced. Still, in spite of government disincentives, demand for energy is high. That means that the price of energy is also high. Industry is thereby encouraged to go elsewhere, resulting in a lack of individual opportunity. That lack of individual opportunity further results in low wages and a lower standard of living.

Then… socialism to the rescue! The resulting low standard of living increases reliance on government handouts. The end result is shared poverty and no air-conditioning…more dead bodies crowding the storage lockers of city undertakers.

The old people die first. 91% of the people in the EU who die of summer heat are 65 years and older. That is 46,074 “geezers” per year or about 13 times the summer heat-related deaths for all persons of all ages in the United States. But for Europe, it works well with its system of government.

Europe has socialized medicine, what Democrats in America call “Medicare for All.” It’s expensive. And treating old people is the most expensive medicine of all. So the easiest way to lower the human footprint on the Earth and save money for the government at the same time is to let the elderly die. Lack of air-conditioning fits into that scenario very well.

For too long, too many Americans have come to believe that, in the words of Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, “One person’s socialism is another person’s neighborliness.”

It is not neighborly to kill old people.

In reality, socialism combined with progressive policies on global warming is a recipe for death. But that socialist death will not come from a new Stalin or a new Mao shooting malcontents in the streets. It will come from simple progressive policies like a lack of air conditioning. Nonetheless, it will be in keeping with the traditional incompatibility between socialism and life.

The problems of Europe illustrate that the danger posed by socialism is that it is a movement all too comfortable with death. Its attitude toward even the small matter of air-conditioning is a window into that reality, a reality which all too many Americans are now endorsing at the ballot box.

Robert M. Levy

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Robert M. Levy grew up in Moore County and graduated from Pinecrest High School. He earned a BA in history and sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where his honors thesis on the Wilmington Rebellion of 1898 became part of the university’s library collection.

Admitted to the California State Bar in 1978, Levy practiced law for 40 years in California and Maryland, focusing on family and criminal law, including work with juvenile offenders and abused children. His writing on affirmative action appeared in the San Fernando Valley Law Review, and he authored Divorce: A Cynical Experience. He later earned a North Carolina teaching certificate from UNC Charlotte and taught high school social studies across Moore County.

Levy has served as chairman of the Moore County School Board, president of the North Carolina Electoral College, chairman of the Moore County Republican Party, and a columnist for The Pilot in Southern Pines. He lives in Pinehurst with his wife, Linda, and they have three children and four grandchildren.

July 5, 2026

Republished with permission.

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