Last month's heat wave killed an estimated 440 people per day at its peak in England and Wales--more than 100 times the daily toll from road crashes in a country that still treats heat as a freak event. This summer alone, families fled a wildfire down Conwy Mountain in Wales, and water-bombers scooped from Paris' Seine for the first time to save the forest at Fontainebleau.

Call it the air-con divide: The household that can afford an air-conditioning unit rides out the heat; the family next door, in an uninsulated rental, does not. The divide widens with every heat wave, a slow sorting of who's safe by who can afford to pay.

Europe insisted for decades that it didn't need air conditioning. Now, panicked, the continent is installing units as fast as it can, though even so, only a fifth of European homes have one. And Europe is a........

© Arkansas Online