I'm John Bachelor speaking with my colleague Joseph Sternberg.

He's in London in a heat wave.

I learned this by reading the Paris papers this morning in which the Parisians who are a

rough lot and can put up with Paris for several hundred years are now fainting in the heat wave that's hit the Olympic

village and all of the city. In fact they're cooling off zones according to the

London Times that I read this morning. I could not tell, however, if the heat wave

had extended to London or farther into the continent. Joe, have you been

feeling unusual temperatures? it is July.

It's pretty hot. I mean, you know, people have to remember that if you look at a globe,

Europe is generally much further north than most of the U.S.

And so I think that people tend to be accustomed to a more moderate climate.

Certainly parts of the continent will tend to be hotter than is the case in the UK but I mean just the past couple days it's been getting up to around 85 86 degrees Fahrenheit here in London and that would sound very impressive to a lot of Americans but remember

they are not set up for that in Europe air conditioning it's not common at all

you know public transport tends not to be air conditioned and especially because people are, you know, governments are enforcing high energy prices and low energy usage and things like air conditioning precisely because of this climate change

policy they're pursuing, the heat does become very oppressive very quickly. And right now, are there warnings about elderly people such as myself stay inside?

We have that one in severe heat waves.

Is that happening now on the beeb?

I definitely you'll see advisories for people to stay indoors as much as possible.

I mean I can tell you're in your listeners I have been working from home the past day or two with the curtains closed and the windows open on the shady side of my home, you know, trying to stay as still as possible.

And again, this is a failure of adaptation because they're set up to deal with cold temperatures

with all of the home insulation,

which is supposed to keep the air inside the house,

...