"People will burn anything"

When we moved to the country in June this year, one of our top priorities was securing our firewood for the winter. There were a couple of cubic meters — commonly called cubes here — from last year and we ordered another five. Then, a couple of months later, we ordered another five, just in case, because you never know and the way things are going in Europe we’d better err on the side of caution.

Meanwhile, local media began warning that demand for firewood has increased so much, there was heightened danger of illegal logging flourishing after years of (largely unsuccessful) efforts to curb the destructive practice. I think the government limited firewood exports as well. But this is nothing compared to what’s happening elsewhere in Europe.

“If their survival depends on it, people will burn anything.” These are the words of an environmentalist from Hungary, who quite rightly lamented “Years of development will go down the drain now” to the FT as the poorest Hungarians collect any combustible material, including old shoes and garbage, to keep warm.

The quote by Zsuzsanna F Nagy, director of the Green Connection Association, is in fact a statement of a fundamental truth: when our basic needs are under threat we will do quite literally anything to remove this threat. It’s a question of survival, after all, and we are wired to survive.

Of course, this sort of fundamental truths are not as sexy as climate change so they tend to get overlooked by editors until push comes to shove, as it came to Hungary’s poorest this heating season. Remember how John Kerry expressed the hope that the war in the Ukraine will not “derail international efforts to curb climate change”?

His statement remains one of the most cynical public statements I’ve had the misfortune of witnessing. Sadly, it wasn’t the last one.