Burnt toast

My home is burning. I don't think I have ever experienced the consequences of the climate crisis so closely and clearly. My city smells like burnt toast. When you take a step outside, it's suddenly in your nose, this smell of fire and smoke inhalation and apocalypse. It's "only" the mountains that burn. Not the houses. I think only a few people have been injured so far. But if you live close to the mountain, you can't escape the smoke. Where should we breathe? At some point your room will smell like smoke and you won't even notice it filling your lungs. Yes, I smoke cigarettes sometimes. But this is different. We have no choice but to breathe in the air that floats outside our front door. For the first time I feel a bit like this. Your immediate living space is being attacked by something that you know could be avoided. And it's not your fault. Well, it's not my fault either. It's all of us. But if we all fought against it, it could be avoided. That feels unfair. And nothing happened to me except that my home smells like a burned forest. I imagine my house burning or flooding and it must be the worst thing in the world. I imagine a young person who grew up on a beautiful little island. And how he has to watch how every year a few meters of his home is swallowed by the huge sea. And he knows exactly why this happens. And it has NOTHING to do with him. But somewhere in Luxembourg someone has just bought their 6th Porsche. He knows that too. And it makes him damn angry. He can take to the streets, he can post it on Instagram or start petitions, he can even go on hunger strike and risk his life, but he knows that in the end it won't make any difference. Because the voice of that one little person will never be heard by them . The people who have the power to stop it. And then there's this whole huge collective of people who deny him his experience because they don't feel like riding a bike every now and then or eating less meat. And because they think they are naturally superior to other people. And then they start voting for parties that would rather let all 7,000 islanders drown than accept them into their (still) safe country. People who are so afraid of personal loss that they start lying to themselves. They become experts at dehumanizing groups of people they don't like, thereby justifying discrimination and violence. “Othering” at the highest level. So much so that they lose empathy because these people are no longer people in their eyes. This is perhaps an extreme example. But a look at Germany's party landscape shows that you don't need fascists or Nazis to let thousands of people sink into the sea. They all know what's happening. So who can we blame? The voters? And what about those who are so poor that they allow themselves to be drawn into right-wing propaganda out of pure fear of loss and a lack of education? Can we hold every single voter responsible for what the humanitarian situation is like? Should we blame those who gave birth to this system? The capitalists and colonialists of the 19th and 20th centuries? Their descendants? Who knows what my great-great-great-grandfather on my mother's side was up to back then. Or even on my father's side. Some Spanish colonialist was definitely there. Or do we blame the politics and governments of the large industrialized countries. Or the Elon Musks of this world. I'm so incredibly angry and I don't know who. So somehow on everyone. All AfD voters, all the Elon Musks of the world and also all the other rich people and Olaf Scholz and also my hated Robert H. And all the business people and many foresters and all the meat eaters and drivers and everyone who consumes fast fashion and everyone else Talk to people who vote for the FDP and everyone who doesn't hate everything and everyone as much as I do. Some of these things apply to me. But who should I be angry with? Who will benefit if I secretly write a hate letter to Joe Biden in my little room and who will benefit if I end up behind bars at some point because I scratched "you murderer" into Christian Lindner's Porsche with my house key. Hating everyone is not the solution. But where can I have the greatest impact to make the world a better place? And is that even possible or can I just give up?