The first problem I had with eco-systems and global warming happened when I was traveling throughout the United States, in heavily democratic states. Outside the houses there were five or six garbage bins, each one for a different kind of garbage. It was a noble idea if it wasn’t for the fact that there were always five or six SUV’s parking in front of these bins. It made me feel that being “green” is just a fashion. What is the point of recycling every piece of garbage if afterward a person is climbing a car that helps pollute the air like it was a small industry?

But in Germany they take ecological matters seriously. People are telling you to shut your car off and freeze to death if you wait more than 60 seconds in your car for someone to come down, and in many regions in the East, the leading panoramic view are the white huge wind turbines. And, unless you are shopping in a Turkish supermarket, you have to pay for the bags. In our house we have huge signs in three languages explaining to me what is going where. We actually had to move three times already in order to accommodate our need to place four different garbage bins in the house.

The other day, my wife came back from work, said hello, kissed me on the cheek, asked what’s for dinner and if I remembered to buy new bulb for our garbage room. I said hello, pasta with Bolonese sauce and that I forgot but I will go down to get one. She asked that if I don’t mind she really would like me to buy energy saver bulb.

I went down and grabbed a 60W energy saver bulb, the cashier scanned it and initially I thought her barcode was broken: the bulb cost 7.89 Euros. For this price I can buy us another two bins so we can separate the broken glasses from the glass bottles and the newspapers from the magazines. I called my wife and told her that it is 7.89 Euros, but she insisted that I should buy it.

(Just a quick note: is it just me or everything that is good for us is so expensive? How many people can really afford a 7.89 bulb, and is it hard to understand someone who refuses to buy 300 grams of bio chicken breast for 7.33 Euros? I mean, you add that cost to whatever you need to cook with the chicken and what you want to eat with it, and you ending up saying: “next time I am going to McDonald’s”).

Anyway, I bought the energy saving bulb (ESB) and went back home. I took the ladder, and changed the bulb. My wife was eating pasta downstairs when I switched the Schalter to turn the bulb on. Nothing.

 “The 8 Euros ESB doesn’t work”, I screamed”.

“Just give it a second”, she screamed back at me in this voice that she uses when she wants to point out that there are two worlds separating us by birth.

I waited a few seconds and then a light flushed our garbage room. I went back to the kitchen and came back to the room with bags of garbage to separate.

“I can’t see nothing! The eight Euros ESB is a piece of shit”, I screamed to my wife.

“This is why it is called Energy Saver Bulb”, she screamed back. “Stop being ignorant. We must contribute to the global effort. Don’t you know what is going on? Icebergs are melting!”

I hate it when she is lecturing me. It is true that I am coming from a third-world country, but she knows very well that I fell asleep 474 times trying to finish one of Al Gore’s lectures in “An Inconvenient Truth”.

“It is a great concept to save energy”, I told her, “the eight Euros ESB doesn’t provide any light. It doesn’t use any energy”.

“You can be such an idiot”, she answered with a mouth full of bio meat.

I went out to the balcony. I am really trying, my newspaper even sent me to the big conference in Copenhagen a couple of months ago, but in the last couple of months in Berlin I can’t really understand what is all the fuss about global warming.