Note from My Desk: Your opponents’ past statements are often more persuasive than your own current arguments

For years, France’s anti-growth, anti-human Green politics treated air conditioning as the enemy: bad for the planet, bad for cities, and dangerous for your health.

And now? France faces one of its most serious heat waves in years — with officials invoking the memory of 2003, when nearly 15,000 people died in France during the summer heat wave.

Lo and behold, the message has shifted.

Now the line is: air conditioning is not “the only solution.” Air conditioning is something the wealthy can access while the poor suffer in overheated apartments.

How convenient.

Fortunately for the Greens, public memory is short. But if I were doing communications for any political party that supports business, growth, technology, and human flourishing, I would pull the old anti-air-conditioning talking points this week and play them on repeat.

This is an easy win.

As someone who works in strategic communications, one of the first rules is that your opponents’ past statements are often more persuasive than your own current arguments. When a major event exposes a contradiction, you remind people what was said before.

Context for Americans: this is not like living through a hot week in Dallas, DC, or Phoenix.

Many French homes, schools, and public buildings do not have air conditioning. Many do not even have ceiling fans. Older buildings trap heat. Dense urban streets and stone buildings can turn whole neighborhoods into ovens.

A serious country should not spend years moralizing about the technology that keeps people alive — and then act surprised when the heat arrives.