France has barely extinguished one of its largest wildfires in decades. An area roughly the size of Hong Kong has burned, and we’re only halfway through the summer. But another heatwave is already here.
People ask how this keeps happening.
I think we’re asking the wrong question.
Every wildfire begins with a sandwich.
Not because a ham sandwich can physically ignite a forest, but because it represents the countless ordinary decisions that build the world in which forests burn.
The sandwich.
The cigarette.
The dairy ice cream we hand to our children without a second thought.
The Shein order arriving tomorrow.
The new backpack and notebooks bought every September even though last year’s are still perfectly usable.
Each decision appears harmless. Each is too small to matter. That is exactly how systems survive. It’s recreated every morning when we choose convenience over necessity, novelty over sufficiency, habit over reflection.
Every purchase is a vote. Not because one purchase changes the world overnight, but because billions of purchases, repeated every day, determine which industries grow, which disappear, and what kind of civilization we continue to finance.
One Amazon order won’t send a billionaire and his friends into space. One dairy ice cream won’t destroy a forest. One unnecessary notebook won’t fill a landfill.
But none of those things happens only once. They happen millions of times, every single day. Eventually those “insignificant” decisions become greenhouse gases, deforestation, polluted rivers, shrinking biodiversity, exhausted soils, expanding infrastructure and ecosystems pushed beyond their limits.
Then comes the heat. Then the drought. Then the spark.
And suddenly everyone becomes an environmentalist.
Hundreds of volunteers leave their homes to protect forests from the flames. They carry water, clear vegetation, do everything they can to stop the fire from reaching nearby villages. Most people see humanity at its finest.
I see humanity desperately trying to repair yesterday while continuing to finance it this morning.
The same people who volunteer their time and energy to protect the forest are then handed tables full of ham and butter sandwiches, soft drinks, sometimes cigarettes.
Volunteering is great. These people are giving their time to protect their homes, their communities, the forest around them. That matters. What bothers me is how easily we separate the emergency from everything that preceded it. We celebrate the person who runs toward the flames while treating the quieter forms of prevention as optional, eccentric, even ridiculous.
Those choices rarely earn applause because they happen long before the crisis, when there is no fire to fight and nobody watching. Yet they may matter far more than the dramatic moments that make the evening news.
We have confused loving the way nature makes us feel with caring about nature itself.
We hike through forests while eating products that contribute to the destruction of ecosystems. We photograph mountains while wrapped in disposable consumption. We defend a burning forest while continuing to finance the industries that place increasing pressure on forests around the world. We rush to fight the fire while throwing fuel onto it for the rest of the year. Economic fuel. Cultural fuel. Political fuel.
None of this means every choice weighs the same. A handful of industries and a handful of governments make decisions that outweigh what any individual could do in a lifetime, and no amount of reused notebooks cancels out a pipeline. But that asymmetry is not an excuse. It’s the reason our purchases are also our politics. Every dollar we hand to an industry is a small vote for its continued expansion, and the industries we’re describing don’t grow without millions of us feeding them first.
People often ask who is responsible for ecological collapse. The government? Corporations? Consumers? The uncomfortable answer is that there isn’t a single culprit. There is a chain, a chain in which every link seems too small to matter until the whole thing snaps.
That’s the butterfly effect.
A civilization is not destroyed by one catastrophic decision. It’ss destroyed by millions of ordinary ones.
Schools are closing or changing schedules. Trains are slowing down. Workers are being told to adapt. Older people are urged to stay indoors. Animals are dying in barns. Rivers are warming. Nuclear power stations are struggling to cool their reactors and being closed down. Farmers are watching the sky, hoping for rain that never comes. Cities are discovering, once again, that concrete, asphalt and glass are not neutral materials. They trap heat.
Every heatwave ends the same way.
“We need to adapt.”
Of course we do. Nobody serious argues otherwise. When temperatures reach 40°C, we need shade, cool public spaces, drinking fountains, schools that do not become ovens, hospitals that can keep functioning and cooling in strategic public buildings, especially for older people, children, sick people, outdoor workers and anyone trapped in poorly designed housing.
But adaptation cannot become the polite word for surrender.
The real question is not how we survive longer heatwaves.
The real question is why we continue to organize society in ways that make them worse.
Unfortunately, that’s the conversation many people would rather avoid.
The climate crisis is not a natural disaster in the way an earthquake is. Scientists warned us for decades. Communities raised the alarm. The solutions have been available for years. Yet, governments protected fossil fuel interests. Oil and gas companies expanded production. Executives collected billions. Politicians delayed, negotiated, softened regulations, greenwashed and lied.
This was not inevitable.
It was a political and economic choice.
Now, the same system that chose fire is trying to sell us fans, bottled water, air conditioners, climate insurance, private pools, green capitalism and survival kits.
The house is burning, and someone has opened a shop in the living room.
Heat Is Only the Symptom
The mistake is thinking this is only about high temperatures.
A heatwave is a stress test for almost everything that keeps society running.
It pushes the human body beyond its limits. It kills directly, especially when nights remain hot and people cannot recover. It damages sleep, concentration, heart health and kidney function. It turns classrooms into places where children struggle to learn and workplaces into places where people struggle to work.
It pushes infrastructure to its limits. Railway tracks expand. Roads soften. Electricity grids strain under rising demand. Hospitals become overloaded.
The irony is that ACs draw more power precisely when energy systems are already under pressure. Nuclear plants need cool water, yet rivers become warmer and shallower. The same heat that increases electricity demand can make electricity harder to produce.
It pushes agriculture as well. Cows produce less milk. Chickens die in industrial sheds. Crops dry out and/or suffer damage that only becomes visible weeks or months later. Soil loses moisture. Water restrictions arrive. Harvests shrink. Food prices rise.
Then everyone acts surprised that groceries become more expensive.
The damage does not end when the thermometer falls.
That’s why surviving the next heatwave is not enough.
The Food System Nobody Wants to Discuss
Climate conversations usually focus on transport.
And transport matters. Flying less matters. Driving less whenever possible matters. The World Cup spread across North America is a perfect example of climate absurdity, an event marketed as global unity while sending teams, fans, journalists and sponsors across an entire continent for entertainment.
But another major part of the crisis rarely receives the same attention because it sits on our plates.
Animal agriculture is one of the least efficient uses of land, water, energy and living ecosystems on Earth.
Livestock occupies roughly three quarters to more than four fifths of global agricultural land, depending on how it is measured, once grazing land and crops grown for animal feed are included. Yet, animal products provide only a minority of the world’s calories and protein. One widely cited Science study found that meat, dairy, eggs and aquaculture use about 83% of farmland while supplying just 18% of calories and 37% of protein.
Read that again.
Most of the farmland.
A fraction of the food.
That is not efficiency.
It is ideology disguised as agriculture.
The system produces far more than meat, milk and eggs. It produces methane, deforestation, polluted rivers, antibiotic resistance, dead zones in coastal waters and immense pressure on land and water.
It also produces immense suffering.
During heatwaves, pigs, chickens and cows cannot simply adapt because consumers expect cheap animal products. Ventilation systems fail. Cooling systems are inadequate or absent. Transport trucks become ovens. Poultry dies by the hundreds of thousands. Dairy cows suffer severe heat stress and milk production falls.
Then the industry presents itself as another victim of climate change while helping drive the crisis in the first place.
This is not about blaming someone trying to feed their family on a tight budget.
The ocean may be the most neglected part of the climate conversation.
We rightly describe forests as the lungs of the planet. They deserve that attention. But the ocean is far more essential to life on Earth. It has absorbed more than 90% of the excess heat trapped by greenhouse gases. It takes in a large share of the carbon dioxide we emit. It produces roughly half of the oxygen we breathe, largely through microscopic phytoplankton.
The ocean is not scenery.
It’s not a backdrop for holidays.
It is one of the reasons this planet is still habitable.
There is something profoundly irrational about destroying marine ecosystems while wondering why the planet keeps overheating.
Industrial fishing is not simply the act of catching fish. It tears apart ecosystems. It removes key species from food webs, kills countless non-target animals and drags heavy nets across the seabed, destroying habitats that took decades, centuries or even millennia to develop.
Yet this rarely appears in mainstream climate debates.
We are told to fly less, and rightly so.
We are told to drive less, and rightly so.
We are only beginning to hear serious discussion about livestock.
But fishing is still treated as though fish simply appear on supermarket shelves and the ocean can absorb endless extraction without consequence.
It cannot.
If the ocean regulates climate, absorbs carbon dioxide, produces oxygen and stores enormous amounts of heat, protecting marine ecosystems is climate policy.
Eating less fish, or choosing not to eat it at all, is not only an ethical position. It is a climate position.
For those who continue to eat seafood, there is at least an important distinction to make between small-scale fisheries and industrial fleets that empty entire ecosystems.
The ocean is one of Earth’s greatest cooling systems. Protect it at all costs.
Why Air Conditioning Can’t Be the Plan
Air conditioning has an important role.
During extreme heat, it saves lives. Hospitals, schools, care homes, public libraries, emergency shelters and social housing all need effective cooling strategies. No one should die inside an apartment built for a climate that no longer exists.
But air conditioning can’t become our primary response.
Every unit cools an indoor space by releasing heat outdoors. Across an entire city, that extra heat makes streets even hotter, particularly after sunset. Air conditioners also increase electricity demand during the hottest periods of the year. Where electricity still depends on fossil fuels, emissions rise. Even cleaner grids face greater strain as peak demand grows.
Singapore illustrates both the benefits and the limits of this approach.
The city has become highly dependent on cooling. Buildings require constant air conditioning. Those systems release heat into the streets. Outdoor spaces become less comfortable, encouraging people to remain indoors, which increases demand for cooling still further.
The cycle reinforces itself.
That’s not resilience, it’s technological dependence.
We don’t need cities filled with cooled rooms.
We need cities that stay cool in the first place.
We Forgot How to Build for Nature
The most effective cooling technology has existed for millions of years.
Trees.
Not decorative saplings planted in tiny squares of concrete, but mature urban forests and healthy green canopies.
Anyone who has walked barefoot from hot pavement onto shaded grass already understands this without reading a scientific paper.
So why, every time France approaches 40°C, do we talk about buying more air conditioners before planting more trees?
Why do we pave over soil, remove mature trees, expand shopping centres, build vast parking lots and approve developments that trap heat, only to claim that more machines are the answer?
They store water, protect biodiversity, stabilise soils, reduce erosion, create humidity and lower temperatures. They make landscapes more resilient long before a heatwave arrives.
Yet even forests are increasingly treated as another industrial resource.
Living ecosystems become timber reserves. Old-growth forests become biomass. Trees are cut down, burned for energy and labelled renewable, while complex ecosystems that took centuries to develop are reduced to units of production.
The same logic appears again and again.
If something can be extracted, it is.
If something can be sold, it is.
The living world is valued less for keeping us alive than for generating another stream of profit.
Water Is Becoming Political
Water is becoming one of the defining political issues of this century.
Yet we still manage it as though nothing has changed.
During droughts, ordinary people are told to take shorter showers. Farmers are asked to reduce irrigation. Small growers are criticised for watering their crops.
Meanwhile, luxury uses fight for exemptions.
Golf courses have become symbols of this contradiction because they expose the politics behind water allocation. While vegetables struggle and ecosystems dry out, perfectly green fairways are often defended. Leisure for the comfortable can receive more protection than food production or ecosystem survival.
Mega-basins reveal the same mindset.
On paper, the idea sounds simple. Capture water in winter and use it during summer.
Reality is more complicated.
Many of these reservoirs are open to the air, increasing evaporation as temperatures rise. They can concentrate control of water in the hands of a limited number of large farms. They often allow water-intensive agricultural models to continue instead of encouraging the transition toward crops and farming systems adapted to the climate that is already arriving.
The question is not whether storing water can ever make sense.
The question is who controls it, who benefits from it and whether it helps transform agriculture or merely postpones change.
A society preparing for the future would treat every drop of freshwater as precious.
Rainwater would be collected wherever possible.
Wastewater would be safely reused.
Leaking infrastructure would be repaired.
Soils would be restored so they can retain moisture.
Cities would remove unnecessary concrete and allow water to return to the ground.
Farmers would receive support to transition toward more resilient practices.
Luxury water use would never be treated as equivalent to drinking water, food production or healthy ecosystems.
The Logic Behind the Crisis
The deeper problem is that our economic system rarely asks what keeps life alive.
It asks what can be sold.
That’s why so many climate conversations end in absurdity.
We’re told to separate our recycling while billionaires fly private jets.
We’re reminded to save water while enormous data centres consume vast amounts of electricity and freshwater to cool servers powering artificial intelligence, advertising and endless digital consumption.
We debate plastic straws while militaries burn enormous quantities of fuel, flatten cities, destroy farms, poison soil and create another wave of emissions through reconstruction.
The priorities are impossible to ignore once you see them.
The Climate Cost of War
War remains one of the largest blind spots in climate politics.
The climate impact of the war on Gaza has been estimated in the tens of millions of tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent once direct military activity and reconstruction are included.
The opening weeks of the US-Israel war on Iran were estimated to produce several million tonnes of emissions.
Lebanon has accused Israel of ecocide following the destruction of forests, farmland and ecosystems in the south.
Yet military emissions are still treated as though they exist outside the atmosphere.
As though bombs leave no carbon footprint.
As though fighter jets fly on moral complexity.
As though hospitals, schools, roads, farms and homes rebuild themselves without steel, cement, machinery and energy.
We can’t keep pretending these emissions don’t count simply because they’re politically inconvenient.
The pattern is difficult to ignore.
Capitalism drives extraction.
Extraction fuels empire.
Empire produces war.
War destroys societies.
Destruction demands reconstruction.
Reconstruction creates more emissions.
Then we’re told that buying a bamboo toothbrush is the meaningful response.
It is not.
Personal Responsibility Matters, but It Is Not Equal
None of this means personal choices are meaningless.
They matter because they reduce demand for destructive industries, help shift culture and make political demands more credible.
But responsibility is not shared equally.
A working family struggling to pay rent is not comparable to a billionaire with private aircraft, multiple homes, yachts and investments in fossil fuels.
Someone eating the foods they were encouraged to consume from childhood is not comparable to multinational agribusinesses lobbying to protect industrial livestock.
A commuter driving because public transport is inadequate is not comparable to governments that refuse to invest in reliable trains, cycling infrastructure and walkable cities.
The message can’t be that ordinary people are the problem.
The message is that we live inside a system designed to make destructive choices easy, profitable and normal while making better choices more expensive, less accessible or socially unusual.
Recognising that distinction is not about avoiding responsibility.
It is the first step toward directing responsibility where it belongs.
What We Can Do
None of this means waiting for someone else to act.
Some of the simplest changes are still among the most effective.
Eat less meat, or stop eating it.
Eat less fish, or stop eating it. If you choose to keep eating fish, understand the difference between small-scale fisheries and industrial fleets that empty entire ecosystems.
Buy fewer clothes. Buy second hand. Repair what you own. Stop treating fashion as a weekly identity update.
Do the same with appliances. Borrow, share, repair and buy used whenever possible.
Build a culture where tools, equipment, transport and household goods are shared instead of endlessly duplicated.
Fly less.
Drive less whenever practical.
Support political parties and movements that take climate change, biodiversity, animal welfare, water management, public services and peace seriously. Voting alone will not solve the crisis, but electing governments that deny climate science, protect fossil fuel interests and normalise war will accelerate it.
Above all, reject fake solutions.
A city with air conditioning but no trees is not prepared.
A country with mega-basins but dying soils is not prepared.
A food system built on industrial animal suffering is not prepared.
A sporting culture that flies millions of people across continents for profit is not prepared.
A digital economy that consumes ever more electricity and water in pursuit of endless growth is not prepared.
A world that treats war as ordinary is not prepared.
France is not ready for what’s coming, and that pains me.
Europe and America aren’t ready either.
The Crisis Behind the Crisis
The tragedy is that even by the narrow standards of economic growth, this system is failing.
Heat kills workers.
It reduces productivity.
It damages harvests.
It weakens infrastructure.
It raises healthcare costs.
It disrupts schools.
It destabilises insurance.
It pushes food prices higher.
It forces governments to spend billions (of our money) responding to disasters they chose not to prevent.
Even someone who cares nothing for animals, forests, rivers, oceans or social justice should recognise one simple reality.
This model is becoming too expensive to sustain itself.
The climate crisis is not only an ecological crisis.
It is a crisis of imagination.
We keep trying to preserve the lifestyle that created the emergency, then call that realism.
But there is nothing realistic about filling unliveable cities with more air conditioners while cutting down trees.
There is nothing realistic about building reservoirs while refusing to transform agriculture.
There is nothing realistic about defending industrial livestock, industrial fishing, fossil fuels, permanent war and luxury consumption while asking ordinary people to adapt.
Realism begins by accepting that an economy built on endless extraction can’t produce a liveable planet.
We don’t need a parasasol over the apocalypse.
We need accountability.
We need to recognise that climate is not a separate issue. It runs through everything.
Our cities.
Our countryside.
Our food.
Our transport.
Our water.
Our forests.
Our oceans.
Our economies.
Our wars.
Not because that sounds radical.
Because the moderate path has become the one driving the crisis.
The planet is not burning because we failed to understand what was happening.
It’s burning because those with the power to change course chose not to.
That choice can still be reversed.
But only if we stop confusing adaptation with acceptance and start confronting the system that keeps choosing fire.
Living near the ocean and surrounded by forest comes with a quiet gift: the constant presence of small, living worlds brushing past my own.
In 2024, my wife and I moved to Lacanau Océan almost by accident and immediately fell in love with the area, especially during the off season, when silence settles in. Beyond the calm and the sense of space, what stays with me most is the wildlife I encounter on my daily walks near the ocean and through the forest.
Below is a little gallery of animals I come across regularly, depending on the season. I’m probably forgetting some.
A list of land animals
Wild boars
Roe deer
Rabbits
Hedgehogs
Red foxes
Bats
Red squirrels
Frogs
Moles
Butterflies
Dragonflies
Snails
Lizards
Ducks
Cats of course
and dogs
And then a bunch of birds too
Kentish plover (the funniest birds itw)
Ravens (my faves)
Blackbirds
White storks (lucky if you see them, but they’re around)
The reason I became a vegan minimalist was mainly to protect it and its inhabitants.
But doing so opened my eyes on a fascinating paradox, especially in the vegan and vanlife communities; a paradox I ponder upon on a daily basis.
Spending more time in the great outdoors allowed me to come to a poignant realization: The very nature that we, avid nature enthusiasts and animal lovers, hold dear to our hearts, is the very same nature we often unwittingly damage with our bad habits.
How can we enjoy something so much while simultaneously participate in its destruction?
Please don’t leave toilet paper in nature (photo by author)
Well, here’s where my thinking is at the moment.
Reasoning
First of all, I want to make something clear: As pragmatic as I can be, my personal belief is that human beings are born good.
However, human beings are also amazing at compartmentalizing.
Screenshot by author
A fitting illustration of my point is that of individuals who profess to be staunch advocates for human rights, yet they contradictorily sport Nike shoes, H&M dresses and Zara pants.
Note: If you don’t know what I’m hinting at, read this.
The same can be said about vegans who consume palm oil, or vanlifers who consume animal products (that destroy the very nature we want to be surrounded by).
Now look, I always say life is all about balance, and I believe it is, but sometimes — often times — rocking something ethically sourced won’t hurt you in any way, shape or form. Perhaps you’ll pay more for it, but you don’t have to if you buy second hand.
This applies to almost all consumables.
So the first takeaway from this piece is to think twice before your next purchases. Always consider the added value of what you buy, its environmental impact and whether there are other alternatives.
That’s one way to tackle this paradox.
Another reason we engage in actions that cause harm to nature is our toxic sense of entitlement, or deservingness.
This manifests itself in different forms: Arrogance, greed, boastfulness or in some cases, negative narcissism.
Some of us behave as if the world owes us. This sense of entitlement emanates from a lack of self-awareness and gratitude, which itself is the result of a Godless, non-religious and non-spiritual society.
Many people believe, wholeheartedly and arrogantly, that everything they have was owed to them.
Hustle culture prescribes “hard work and determination” as the ultimate solution for success, often discarding external factors that also contribute to one’s accomplishments.
Unfortunately, such attitude blinds us from seeing the bigger picture: That none of what we have, none of what we achieve is truly ours, and that it can be taken away from us at any time. It will be when we die.
More humility would do us all a world of good, and without it, we will continue indulging in things that harm us and everything we love.
When the last tree has been cut down, the last fish caught, the last river poisoned, only then will we realize that one cannot eat money. — Native American saying
The third reason behind this great paradox is our lack of concern for the future.
In other words, selfishness.
Social Media may have exasperated this, but many people believe they MUST prioritize their own pleasures and conveniences over the well-being of the environment and future generations.
It’s sickening when you think about it.
But I don’t blame us, not entirely. If anything, we were programmed and brought up this way, but it’s time for a change, a big one.
As a matter of fact, we can’t live like we did 30 years ago, times are changing and so should we, evolution and all.
Indeed, our planet can’t sustain our greed and selfishness for too long, and the time to turn things around is now.
I would never advocate for anything radical, life is all about balance once again.
As such, we don’t have to move to self-built huts, nor do we have to wear banana leaves, but it’s our duty to watch what we consume, how we consume it, and what we want to support.
Your dollars are more potent than your vote and your words. So put your money where your mouth is.
How
You see, I often write about boycotting certain products: Palm oil, white sugar, animal products, single use plastic, brands that pollute our water and source their products in Chinese slave camps and Bengali/Indian sweatshops, brands that support wars, so on and so forth.
To take part of this would make the world significantly better. To do so and to raised our collective awareness is as close to perfection as we can get.
That and reversing consumerism. Remember, minimalism (and essentialism) isn’t just an aesthetic, it’s a philosophy.
In 1927, a Boston-born, Harvard educated son of immigrants went to work for Lehman Brothers. His name was Paul Mazur and his interest in the economics of consumption and retailing made him a rising star in the investment banking establishment for more than 50 years.
Mostly he was responsible for manipulating the psyche of the American consumer. — Sherry Truitt
His philosophy in a nutshell:
“We must shift America from a needs, to a desires culture,” He wrote. “People must be trained to desire, to want new things even before the old had been entirely consumed. We must shape a new mentality in America. Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.”
“Man’s desires must overshadow his needs.” That’s a powerful statement, and a scary one.
So you see, as stated above, human beings are born good, but we were led astray for many decades.
Indeed, our actions are often shaped by cultural and societal norms. Unfortunately, said norms favor efficiency and convenience over wellbeing and ethics. They also favor desires over altruism and consumerism over self-awareness.
We all follow patterns and attitudes considered “normal” in our society, hence why we hardly question anything.
With that being said, let’s not forget that we’re still human, and luckily for us, God bestowed upon us reason and logic.
God gave us free will too, so it’s on us to outgrow our biases and harness original thinking.
Final word
All in all, the paradox of enjoying and destroying nature at the same time is a complex and deeply ingrained issue.
It’s not just about individual behavior, it’s rooted in our cultural, political, and economic systems, making it extremely difficult to shake off.
The one thing I want to leave you with is to question things and at least make sure your actions are aligned with your values, that’s it.
Perhaps some of us have a stronger moral obligation to protect nature, while others don’t. That’s okay, life can’t be perfect and neither can we, but does that mean we should stop trying?
Climate change has become one of the most polarizing topics of our time.
Depending on who you ask, it’s either the greatest challenge humanity has ever faced or a problem that’s been exaggerated beyond recognition. Politicians argue about it. Television debates it. Social media turns it into another battleground.
But what if we stepped away from all of that for a moment?
What if, instead of asking what politicians, journalists or commentators think, we simply looked around us?
Sometimes, reality speaks for itself.
Over the past few years, I’ve watched rivers shrink, forests burn and heatwaves become increasingly common in places where they once felt exceptional. Friends living in different parts of the world tell similar stories. Farmers talk about unpredictable seasons. Water restrictions have become more frequent. Wildfires have intensified across multiple continents.
You don’t have to agree with every headline to notice that something is changing.
You don’t have to trust every report to observe what’s happening around you.
Talk to older relatives.
Talk to people who work the land.
Talk to fishermen, hikers or anyone who spends significant time outdoors.
Ask them whether the seasons still feel the same as they did twenty or thirty years ago.
Whether you trust politicians, journalists or climate scientists isn’t actually the point I’m making.
Reality exists independently of who reports it.
Climate change doesn’t care whether we’re conservative or progressive, religious or secular, rich or poor.
The atmosphere doesn’t vote.
Nature doesn’t negotiate.
The real question isn’t whether the climate is changing.
It’s how we choose to respond.
For me, the answer has less to do with waiting for revolutionary technologies than with rethinking the way we live.
We consume far more than we need.
We replace products that still work.
We normalize waste.
We chase convenience even when it comes at a tremendous environmental cost.
Modern consumerism has taught us that happiness comes from buying more.
The planet is telling us otherwise.
That doesn’t mean giving up comfort or returning to life centuries ago.
It means consuming more intentionally.
Buying fewer but better things.
Repairing instead of replacing.
Walking when we can.
Using public transportation more often.
Supporting companies that take sustainability seriously.
Reducing food waste.
Sharing resources instead of duplicating them.
Holding companies like banks accountable.
Many of these habits don’t just reduce our environmental impact.
They also save money, reduce stress and improve our quality of life.
That’s one of the reasons I was drawn to minimalism in the first place.
The same choices that help us live with less clutter often happen to be the same choices that place less strain on the planet.
Perhaps that isn’t a coincidence.
Maybe we’ve spent so long looking for complicated solutions that we’ve overlooked the simple ones.
Throughout history, humanity has repeatedly adapted to new challenges.
Teekay Rezeau-Merah 