It certainly does not hurt to go after a wildfire with one single fire extinguisher, but it won’t do much good either.
If you play with fire, you may end up getting burned. With a little luck and a small fire extinguisher, you can get a little fire (that you might be responsible for) under control. However, as soon as the flames start jumping from one to another, we end up with a societal inferno that heats the entire planet. Once the time has come, only the common, societal effort to extinguish the fire will make a difference.
Only a few people are trying to radically reduce their own ecological footprint. But the personal sacrifice and commitment required to monitor your every purchase, move, and holiday in order to reduce your CO2 balance is large; it’s like using a single
Fire Extinguisher Against the Inferno
. The end of the oil age will not be the sum of the abstention of individuals, but rather will require global, regional and local political negotiation in order to implement the agreements reached.
More and more people have started gardening to get a little piece of nature in the city. High biodiversity characterizes the various urban gardening projects, inner-city parks, and fallow areas. Last but not least, urban beekeepers collect honey from their urban hives, which shows the resilience and potential of urban spaces. The cities are therefore acting as small
Fire Extinguisher Against the Inferno
of monoculture and pesticides, which has long only spared what could be sold.
The little house on a greenbelt, preferably in a suburb on the outskirts of town, is still a common dream as well as the reality of one third of all households in Germany - and rising. We don’t need to write more about the inferno of the current housing and urban planning crisis as more and more people are getting by without the accompanying greenbelt and instead replace it with an abiotic but easy to maintain rock garden. Meanwhile, the
Fire Extinguisher Against the Inferno
stands somewhere in the pretty single family home where it gets dusted once a year.