People live longer in many parts of Europe than the USA. Does that mean the USA is somehow negligent?

Excess deaths due to heat are primarily the in the elderly. The excess numbers we are seeing now are because the proportion of elderly people in France, Germany and Spain are higher than in the USA.

If the population pyramid in the EU was more similar to that of the USA the number of excess deaths would be lower. I'm not sure negligent is the correct word to use. Climate change will reduce quality of life. Because of these changes people will not live as long.

That's how excess deaths work.

▲

jp57 9 hours ago | parent [-]

Having more old people is even more of a reason to make it easy to get air conditioning.

I live in the USA, and there are certainly many ways in which the USA is negligent on health care, but making sure people can stay cool in hot weather isn't one of them.

In any case, this isn't a zero sum game, where the USA's negligence in one area negates Europes negligence in another.

	▲	PH02 6 hours ago \| parent [-]
		I think you may have missed the point. It's not a matter of more old people, it's more old people relative to the rest of the population. The excess death numbers reported will happen because more people live longer in the EU than in other places. Those excess death numbers can't be sustained over time, because our population pyramid will gradually resemble something more like yours. Alternatively put, if the EU population pyramid resembled the US population pyramid we wouldn't have the excess death numbers that have been reported during the heatwaves (because most of those people would have already been dead). It's not the case that people are boiling in the streets. It's more similar to COVID-19. People who were going to die relatively soon die earlier. That's what excess deaths is.