Eco123 Revista da Economia e Ecologia
By Uwe Heitkamp
Are you interested in a game in which the deeper meaning lies in getting a ball, kicking it into a net and then shouting “Goal! Goal! Goal!”? Imagine trying to explain the game of football to an alien, and above all the meaning behind this sport. Because it is, after all, just a sport. Someone lands on our planet Earth, after a long journey through outer space, and finds everyone staring at a square box that we call television. And they don’t stop staring at it for 90 minutes, watching the story of how a ball is being kicked in front of crowds of people. We don’t even notice that a UFO has just landed in our backyard, which is actually a much more important topic than scoring a goal. What do you think? A UFO lands in your backyard and you’re watching football!
You could steal the cheese from a football fan’s sandwich and they wouldn’t even notice; they would just carry on drinking their beer. Aliens have landed, and everyone’s glued to their TVs watching Portugal play the Democratic Republic of Congo. Watch out for Ebola is all I can say! But picture this (this is what I’m imagining right now): FIFA President Gianni Infantino takes one euro from every World Cup ticket sold and uses it to buy a young tree? Think reforestation. He would initiate a gigantic project and plant a vast forest that would provide us with oxygen, protection from the heat, shade and fruit, as well as nuts, chestnuts, apricots and much more. The forest would be bigger than Portugal, bigger than the Iberian Peninsula, as big as the Sahara Desert.
And, instead, this man just comes along and pockets the money. What does he do with it? He wants to make football more popular in Rwanda, Mozambique, Lesotho and Sri Lanka, he says. To raise the prize money for the FIFA Peace Prize awarded to Donald Trump. To pay for the bribes he will have to make if he wants to be re-elected. Are you interested in football? I’m just imagining this: every football fan who buys a $1,000 ticket takes just one single dollar and buys a single tree, maybe a linden. Linden trees don’t burn very easily and are very resilient. They can withstand a lot of heat, which is very useful, because it’s going to get even hotter soon, the meteorologists say. Cork oaks and carob trees are also resilient species. And olive trees too, and so on and so forth…
Now we just need to incorporate the UFOs into this story. Maybe we can even get the aliens to plant the trees for us, then we can continue watching TV undisturbed…
