A record heat wave has millions sweltering this week all across Europe. France experienced its hottest day ever on Wednesday with temperatures topping 43.3°C (110°F) in parts of the country. Britain recorded its highest temperature ever for June, 38.8°C (101.8°F), in southern England, while Spain saw its highest daily average temperature 28.08°C (82.5°F) in June since 1950. 

Once extreme heat is becoming the new normal. The heat waves across the continent have been super charged by climate change. Europe is warming twice as fast as the rest of the world—it's the fastest warming continent in the world and the second fastest region after the Arctic. While southern Europe has always seen heat waves, much of Europe and the U.K. has historically had a cooler climate—and its infrastructure was built in that context. Combined with the rapid warming, this has left countries underprepared for the unprecedented and multiple heat waves being experienced each summer—and it’s placing people’s lives at risk.

Over the last four years, more than 200,000 have died in the E.U. at the hand of extreme heat—and many of the deaths were preventable. “In some sense Europe is facing the brunt of the overall global warming much faster than the rest of the world,” says Malcolm Mistry, assistant professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, whose research focuses on environmental epidemiology.

In many European countries, homes and buildings are old—and designed for a very different climate. In some countries, like England and France, homes “act as a furnace,” says Mistry, designed to trap heat.

“It’s designed to solve a very opposite problem,” says Ronita Bardhan, professor of sustainable built environment and health, at the University of Cambridge, adding that updating old housing stock won’t be easy. “The housing stock is predominantly already built, so it's a very different situation [from] where you have a green field to build new.”

Old buildings were not designed to include cooling, and the region’s once-mild climate meant there was no need for A.C. “Most European cities historically had needed little cooling, so building design guidelines never anticipated integrating cooling systems,” says Bardhan. 

Today, only about 20% of European homes have air conditioning, according to data from the International Energy Agency, compared to 90% of American homes. However, some countries have been quicker to adopt it than others. Nearly 50% of Italians now have A.C. in their homes, while 7% of homes in Britain are equipped with air conditioning, double the rate from just three years ago.

Yet even as the continent continues to face rising temperatures, it's unlikely to become widespread—especially as the E.U. looks to phase out hydrofluorocarbons, a polluting cooling agent commonly found in A.C. units, by 2050. “If you think of the E.U. as a bloc, they're quite mindful of policies that can have a negative impact on the climate,” says Mistry. “So while there is a recognition that air conditioning itself is required to meet cooling requirements, there's also an overall understanding that we cannot openly push for that as a way to maintain the cooling, because it's going to have a side effect.”

Instead, many countries are looking at other adaptive measures—artificial shading, more green spaces, and updating building codes to ensure that newer buildings are better designed to handle heat. 

More immediately, local authorities are taking precautions like heat action plans, makeshift cooling centers, and communicating the dangers of heat waves well in advance, but they have been unable to adequately respond to health emergencies that result from heat waves, Mistry says. “Local authorities, despite their best efforts, have not been able to prepare the public health services and emergency services in advance to account for an expected spike in, for instance, hospital-related admissions related to heat,” he adds. That’s, in part, because the E.U.’s population is aging: the number of senior citizens, who are more vulnerable to the effects of extreme heat, has risen by approximately 40% over the past two decades. What’s more, many of Europe’s health care systems are already stretched thin—even without an extreme weather event to contend with. 

At the end of the day, meaningful mitigation will require global action to reduce greenhouse gases—slowing the rate of warning. “Climate change at the end of the day is a global problem, and what I mean by that is in effect no matter what one country in particular does, for instance,” says Mistry. “If other countries are not going to be on the same boat, then we are still struggling to fight a lone battle.”