Temperatures in Paris hit 40.9 degrees Celsius — about 105.6 degrees Fahrenheit — last week. France recorded its hottest day since records began nearly 80 years ago. At least 48 people drowned trying to cool off in rivers and canals. The World Health Organization says more than 1,300 excess deaths have been recorded across Europe since June 21.

And Audrey Pulvar, Paris's deputy mayor, knows exactly who to blame: you, sitting in your air-conditioned living room in America.

Pulvar took to Instagram to address American journalists and social media users who had the audacity to point out that Paris doesn't have air conditioning in most buildings. "Dear American journalists and social media 'influencers': for days, some of you have been criticizing and making fun of Paris because the city does not have A/C in every room," she wrote. "OMG, this is so rich!"

Rich is one word for it. Another word is "deflection while your citizens are dying."

Pulvar went on to lecture the United States directly: "As the second-largest emitter of greenhouse gas emissions in the world, you bear a significant amount of responsibility for global warming." She added that American cities that are "90% air-conditioned" are "not unrelated" to Europe's heat crisis, and that "air conditioning contributes and aggravates the problem of global warming."

Her proposed alternative to staying alive in triple-digit heat: ecological transition. "If every American city made the same ecological transition efforts as Paris and many European cities," Pulvar wrote, "the whole world would be better off." Meanwhile, French authorities imposed alcohol restrictions in public spaces, restricted large public gatherings, reduced hours at the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre, and deployed thousands of emergency workers — everything except the one thing that would actually keep people from dying.

American cities like Phoenix and Dallas experience brutal summers with far fewer excess deaths than Europe. Phoenix regularly sees months of 115-degree heat. The death toll from heat there is a fraction of what France just experienced in a single week. The difference isn't genetics or willpower. It's a $300 window unit from Home Depot.

Pulvar's argument boils down to this: air conditioning causes warming, warming causes heat waves, heat waves kill people, therefore air conditioning kills people. By that logic, the cure for drowning is to stop manufacturing boats. The 48 French citizens who drowned trying to escape the heat might have preferred a split-unit system over a swim in the Seine, but nobody asked them.

The deputy mayor insists that "In Paris, we take responsibility." What she means is that Paris takes a position. Positions are free. Air conditioning costs money, requires energy infrastructure, and — worst of all for a European bureaucrat — concedes that the American approach to a problem might actually work.

France has known about this vulnerability for over two decades. The 2003 European heat wave killed nearly 15,000 people in France alone. The prescription then was the same as now: more green policy, more urban planning, more lectures about consumption. Twenty-three years later, people are still dying, and the official response is still to blame someone else's thermostat.

Phoenix has 4.8 million people in a metro area where summer temperatures exceed 110 degrees for weeks at a time. Paris has 2.1 million in a city that panics at 105. One city buries a handful of heat-related deaths per year. The other just logged 1,300 across its continent in ten days.

The difference isn't climate policy. It's a compressor.