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Call it a tale of two heatwave experiences.

As brutally hot conditions brought much of western Europe to its knees, an American writer living in Paris asserted that, for many, the heat was not “nearly as apocalyptic” as most media were suggesting. He said he had yet to buy a fan, instead relying on closed shutters, misting sessions and open windows in the evening to keep his ground-level flat cool.

Less than 20km away, in a southern suburb of Paris, Aboubakar, 60, wept as he explained that temperatures had climbed as high as 40C inside his fourth-floor flat. “I’m suffocating,” he told the Guardian. “I can’t afford to buy a fan. There are no shutters on my flat. At night I can’t sleep, it’s like a furnace.”

It’s a glimpse of a disparity that researchers in Europe and beyond have increasingly sought to highlight as the climate crisis intensifies. As scorching summer temperatures become the new normal, those living in poverty are disproportionately bearing the brunt.

Julio Díaz Jiménez, a professor at Madrid’s Carlos III health institute, told me when I first started to dig into this: “It’s common sense. A heatwave is not the same when you’re in a shared room with three other people and no air conditioning, as when you’re in a villa with access to a pool and air conditioning.”

This disparity burst into view in recent days, as the most severe heatwave on record swept across much of Europe, leaving up to 150 million people, from Bordeaux to Budapest, grappling with days of record-breaking temperatures.

As the mercury soared past 40C at times, people got creative: heat-choked Parisians took to sleeping in parks, police in Berlin deployed water cannon to cool people down and households in Amsterdam hung curtains outside their windows to block out the sun.

It soon became clear, however, that not everyone was equally exposed, or able to access such strategies.

In the UK, hotels reported a surge in demand from people booking air-conditioned rooms. In the richest area west of Paris, some towns banned access to their municipal swimming pools for anyone coming from other areas, while in Germany, a public swimming lake turned away visitors who did not speak German.

Others, including those who live in the half of French homes that have insufficient protection from high temperatures, said they had little choice but to suffer through the heat. Some live in heat-trap homes or concrete-heavy areas with little access to green spaces; many rely on crowded, hot buses to get around the city.

Many spoke of struggling to access adequate healthcare, leaving them more likely to suffer conditions that could be exacerbated by extreme heat or working in sectors where they are regularly exposed to high temperatures, such as agriculture and construction.

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The hardest hit

As Asad Rehman, chief executive of Friends of the Earth, told the Guardian, the heat “throws a grenade into every vulnerability you already have”.

The sharp divergence in experiences should set off alarm bells for policymakers across Europe, the world’s fastest-warming continent. As my colleague Ajit Niranjan pointed out in a climate crisis Q&A this week: “Each year heat kills 10 times more people than murderers in Europe.”

The point was underlined by recent research suggesting that the combination of extreme temperatures and inequality could be responsible for more than 100,000 deaths a year in Europe.

Instead, the heatwave laid bare just how unprepared much of Europe is for extreme heat, with most people left to their own devices to cope. A fuller picture of the consequences of this most recent heatwave is now beginning to emerge, as France’s national public health agency said about 1,000 additional deaths were recorded between 24 and 27 June, while in Spain, a public institute suggested that the heatwave could be linked to more than 600 deaths.

It’s a bleak display of how the climate crisis is exacerbating inequalities, argued the leftwing Democracy in Europe Movement 2025, launched by Greece’s former finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in a stark social media post.

“This heat is not only a climate emergency, but it is also a class war,” it said. “The rich burn the planet, then buy air conditioning, private pools and second homes while workers are left in overheated flats, unsafe jobs, failed public services and burning cities.”

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