In Defence of Fire.

I’ve long been a convert to climate change action, and so I appreciate the need to vastly reduce carbon emissions generated by humans. And yet there’s one thing that worries me slightly: I do hope the legislators won’t stop people having open fires.

The relationship between the human and his fire is buried deep in the race memory. For millions of years he has been warming himself by utilising radiant heat – from the sun during the day, and from flame when the celestial body sinks low or disappears altogether.

The tin box sitting on the wall, or the pipes lying under the floorboards, gently dispensing conducted and convected heat to warm the room evenly, are practical enough but they lack soul. The open fire is so close to the human soul that I regard it as indispensable to a species which prides itself on looking beyond mere mundane exigency.

So please, you legislators, make cars and planes which run on electricity; manufacture that electricity by harnessing the power of the sun, the wind, and the waves; fuel the factories and the shops by the same means, but don’t deprive us humans of our soul mate.