Europe Finally Embraces Air Conditioning as Heat Waves Hit Hard

I feel a strong need to point out awnings and (outside) roller blinds to stop insolation before it heats up the inside in the first place.

Sure that helps, still not enough when it's 35°C or more outside every day for a week and doesn't cool down further than 25°C outside at dawn.
- You coule use a ceiling fan, they work pretty great. And then just don't let sun inside the house that will heat it up. Where I'm from it's essentially never under 25° and inside is fine. Just got air-conditioning in the bedrooms but barely use it personally.

We will likely have AC installed at home before the next summer.

I don't like it, particularly because of the impact on climate and energy consumption, but with the prolonged heat nowadays, it's become nigh impossible to keep our home comfortable throughout most of the summer. :(

If you are getting a heat pump then your impact on the climate will probably be better than your current radiator configuration. Especially as more renewables are brought online.
I think the environmental impact can be limited:
Highest demand peaks correlate with highest solar panel output, which would be hard to use or store otherwise. Especially nice when private, local panels are available.
Some also work as a heat pump in reverse for highly efficient heating in winter.
- The problem is the gas air-conditioning uses more even than the electricity consumption
- You can maybe also use the produced heat for water heating so you get hot water for showers. Dont know if you can get heat pump units that does that all on one tho?
- We would have solar panels installed beforehand, so that's fair, does a little for lessening my guilt.
Buildings need to integrate centralized cooling and district cooling much more.

I'm in the hottest, sunniest part of Germany and I'm doing fine with the rolling blinds closed. It's 36C outside and 24C inside. AC not required.

That said, my work absolutely needs AC, because the building sucks.

My apartment is under the roof. It's well insulated but if the heat lasts longer than 3 days, it becomes unbearable. Heat soaked in, nothing we can do about it at this point.
- I have one person living between me and the roof, i think she might also last 3 days. But also the colder parts slowly heat up. Not sure how many days i have myself, but the soaked in heat definitely get worse every day.
That is because your house is well insulated.
In Belgium, we are living in a small house with roof insulation while renovating the main house.
The small house gets up to 32 degrees inside when it is 34 outside as it has little thermal mass and is not sealed as it is an old stone atelier. We have to sleep in 30+ heat regularly during heat waves.
Main house is better insulated. We resorted to blankets over the southern windows and it is around 26 inside without us living in it at all (windows open at night and shut during the day). When we shift to moving there, it will be warmer. We would have to spend 45 000€ to insulate the walls + 10 000€ for roll shutters. Heat pump is the next best option coming in at a small fraction of that.
- I've lived in two badly insulated houses and they stayed amazingly cool. Thick stone walls, baybee.