Using a natural resource as a means of ignition isn't so crazy.
By that standard, producing amadou or making a bow drill is just as pointless and time consuming.
Pay no attention to the naysayers. Crazy it might be, but crazy ideas sometimes work! Let me cite an example:
Suppose you have a waterfall. Suppose further that you make bubbles in the water before it goes over the fall. Suppose yet further that at the top of the fall the water (or perhaps just some of it) runs into some sort of a pipe which is more-or-less vertical, then at the bottom of the fall it turns 90 degrees to horizontal, and from there it passes under a closed chamber, and on along the pipe some distance to eventually squirt out of the end of the pipe -- under considerable pressure, the height of the waterfall providing the pressure.
As the water flows through the horizontal pipe, the bubbles in the water rise to the surface. When they reach the chamber, they rise into that, and (much to the surprise of everyone reading this crazy scheme) it fills up with compressed air which is easily tapped just by drilling a hole in the chamber and fixing a spigot to it. This method of supplying free compressed air was used from about the early seventeenth century, well before the invention of electrically powered prime movers and pumps, for example in forges. It even powered the first electricity generation plant in Paris:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trompe
Free compressed oxygen anyone?
I'm still with you on this one.