Athletes in the upcoming Summer Olympics will not be able to use air conditioning units in their apartments because the city of Paris wants to fight climate change.
In an effort to host the “greenest ever” Olympic games, Paris built housing for athletes that relies on a system that uses underground water to keep athletes cool instead of air conditioning.
For those of you skeptical about this method, don’t worry. Yann Krysinski, the senior VP of Project Management at SOLIDEO (which is managing the buildings and infrastructure for the Paris Games), said they’ll be just fine.
It seems it's no sweat.
“We designed these buildings so that they would be comfortable places to live in in the summer, in 2024 and later on, and we don’t need air conditioning in these buildings because we oriented the facades so that they wouldn’t get too much sun during the summer, and the facades, the insulation is really efficient,” Krysinski said.
Now it's true that geothermal cooling can significantly reduce carbon output, which was one of the goals of the tournament organizers. But is not using air conditioning for a couple of weeks in the summer going to make that big a difference?
Evidently, the socialist mayor of Paris - Anne Hidalgo - guaranteed that this would be a foolproof plan (because we should all trust socialists whenever they come up with a new idea).
“This village was designed to avoid the need for air conditioning, even in very, very high temperatures, in order to maintain comfortable temperatures,” Hidalgo said.
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The mayor was adamant in saying that we all need to trust her and the Olympics organizers because we’re on the brink of extinction due to climate change.
“I think we have to trust science on two counts,” Hidalgo said. “The first is what scientists are telling us about the fact that we are on the brink of a precipice. Everyone, including the athletes, must be aware of this. And secondly, we have to trust the scientists when they help us to construct buildings in a sober way that allows us to make do without air conditioning.”
“Trust the science?” Authorities coming up with potentially disastrous solutions to fix a problem that isn't as bad as we think? I feel like I’ve seen this movie before…
It is not surprising that several countries are not buying into this effort to stop climate change once and for all. Teams form Canada, Greece, Ireland, and the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) have already said they’re bringing air conditioners with them for their athletes.
“We appreciate the concept of not having air conditioning due to the carbon footprint,” AOC CEO Matt Carroll said “But it is a high-performance Games. We’re not going for a picnic. As we’ve explained to the Paris Organizing Committee, athletes have got to sleep during the day, because their events are at night. Daytime will be when it’s hottest. That’s been informing our decision in putting temporary air conditioners in the athletes’ rooms and also fans.”
For the athletes’ sake, I hope this new cooling system works. If not, Hidalgo, Krysinski, and anyone else involved in this decision could win the gold medal for stupidity.
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