Perhaps it’s an inevitable part of human nature to grow numb. In the words of a mildly cynical Chinese saying: get bitten by too many ticks, and you’ll hardly feel the itch anymore.

That’s the general sentiment as California falls into flames again. Like last year, and the year before. And the year before that. We’re seeing the same pictures of inky tree silhouettes cast against the backdrop of otherworldly orange, the same calls for renewable energy and environmental stewardship.

So many of the recent developments spell trouble and worry. After taking a brief dip, coal consumption is on the rise again. The UN climate report from this past summer issued a “code red” warning for humanity’s future. And despite a one-and-a-half-year halt in commuting and air travel, our carbon emissions hardly fell compared to previous years and temperatures have only continued to peak. We’re wading ever further into unfamiliar territory and flirting with disaster.

But the point is that the California blazes are becoming not so much headlines as they are a kind of dreaded annual ritual, another entrée in the long banquet of natural disasters to drag us through whichever of the four seasons actually remain. The images are horrifying, but they’ve been cycled through enough times — like the clips of flooding New York subways or the photos of the ungodly wreckage in Belgium and Louisiana — to become somewhat tolerable to the eye. By now, we’ve seen nearly all there is to see.

I could tell you about the 33 billion tons of carbon dioxide we pumped into the atmosphere this past year, the 267 gigatons of glaciers that are melting away annually or that another 2,443,196 acres in California have already been burned this past year. But none of this probably matters — they’re a different set of statistics pointing nonetheless to the same narrative of doom and disaster that has been played on loop for the past four decades. We’re at the point when the numbers have reached such staggering magnitudes that they simply elude any attempt to make meaning of them.

We’ve all known about climate change, though. Most of us can trace the current climate disaster to Donald Trump’s rollback spree of some 100 climate policies or the stubborn pointlessness of those who continue their meaningless attempts to debunk climate change nearly a century after its discovery. When Yale refused to divest from fossil fuels, we stormed football fields and Cross Campus. We can crunch the numbers and lobby for carbon taxes. We can propose grand plans worthy of fixing all those grand problems. We advocate, rail and rally.

But, like everyone else, we each struggle to uphold our commitments, especially when the temptations of the present offer more expedient alternatives. The normalcy of so many of our Yalie lifestyles stands in eerie contrast to the present state of our world. Protest for divestment but toss the leftovers in the trash because that roasted chicken is, by all reasonable estimates, likely less than 0.0000001 percent of the food waste generated each day by a nation 328 million strong. Lobby for new carbon policies but indulge yourself in a 20-minute hot shower and order from Amazon Prime, since there are 7.6 billion others living and breathing and wasting just as much as you are. Once you sit down and run the calculations, you realize that hardly anything you do on a day-to-day basis will ever even scratch the surface in the cosmic scheme of nations, continents and companies.

Which is correct, and also incredibly faulty. The future of the planet will decidedly rest in the hands of our governments and economic choices, often making the inertia of Capitol Hill politics or the messy economic card games played by global superpowers beyond frustrating. Nor does it help when the success of our climate policies lies under a capricious government prone to political mood swings every four years. But chalking the issue up to lip service promises and forces greater than our own also makes room for the apathy, scapegoating and impunity that allow us to continue our cognitive dissonance. We can’t demand from others what we have failed to follow through ourselves. We’re irrational creatures burning away through the time we have left, procrastinating on an assignment whose consequences are nothing short of life and death. Now is no longer the time for speculation, despair, cynicism or finger-pointing. If we are to make meaningful, measurable change, we must not only push for new policies but begin by claiming personal responsibility for our daily actions.

Weeks ago, fires swept into a grove of sequoias in northern California. Firefighters wrapped an aluminum blanket around the base of General Sherman. Physically speaking, the line of defense looked meager and unconvincing at best, a thin ring of foil hastily draped over 275 feet of 2000-year-old bark. Technically speaking, it was also lacking — you don’t need to be a material scientist to doubt that a blanket capable of providing only short-term protection will reasonably fend off the swelling plumes of fire if and when they come.

All the same, a 12-foot, measly fire blanket is sometimes our best attempt at saving what little we have left. I think that’s at least better than nothing.

HANWEN ZHANG is a sophomore in Benjamin Franklin College. His column is titled ‘Thoughtful spot.’ Contact him at hanwen.zhang.hhz3@yale.edu