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I have been trying to come up with a metaphor to describe the concept of "green" energy to my kids but have come up short…….. but it does remind me of an interesting story ..... I will share it with you……
In ancient times there was a group of three islands all relatively close together and they traded with each other. It was apparent to all the people of these islands that coconuts were incredibly important to their survival. Virtually everything they needed was made out of coconuts.
One island was fortunate to be populated by productive people know as the Peans but was made up of tall rocky mountains with coconut trees very high on the mountain tops where they were hard to harvest.
Another island was very fertile, flat and covered with abundant, easy to access coconut trees, but unfortunately was populated by a nameless very unproductive people who did not care to make things out of their own coconuts even though they knew they needed coconut products to survive.
The third island, was fertile with lots of easy to access coconut trees but also has some high up in the mountains as well. This island was populated by very productive and industrious people known as the Mericans. The Merican people's coconut pickers were very productive. They harvested lowland coconuts with hardly any effort and their artisans were famous for fashioning them into the finest coconut products for every conceivable need.
The nameless people on the fertile unproductive island saw how good the Merican's coconut products were and since they were sitting on a huge pile of even easier to harvest coconuts than the Merican's, offered to trade their plentiful coconuts with them for their fine coconut products…….now the Mericans had their own coconuts plus the ones traded to them at an even lower cost……..they are awash in cheap coconuts and were able to produce even more lower cost coconut products that everyone on both islands could afford!!! The Merican island flourished!!
The Peans on their rocky island made fine coconut products as well but they had a dilemma. The four day climb to the top of their mountains to reach their coconuts made their coconut products very expensive and time consuming to produce. The Pean people had to live very frugally to get by because all the coconut products they could make took so much effort to produce. They too wanted to trade coconut products with the nameless unproductive people. Unfortunately, the price of their products was so high that the nameless people preferred to just trade with the Mericans. This made the Pean people extremely jealous. Their leaders all met one night around the council fire to discuss their problem. What were they going to do?....Everyone else had either very cheap coconuts or access to an abundant supply of very cheap coconuts…..... .
Their leader, Big Chief EURO had a brilliant idea! He ordered all of his artisans to make as many of their expensive coconut products as possible and to carve a big "H" into all of them to show they had been produced with HIGHLAND coconuts from the top of their island. He then ordered them to place them in bags in his canoe. That evening, alone he paddled off towards the Merican island.
Chief EURO landed in the middle of the night and began speaking about the virtues of HIGHLAND COCONUTS……he spoke with great vigor and was very convincing. Every evening more and more of the Mericans joined him to hear about the powers of the spiritually clean HIGHLAND COCONUTS. Once the crowds began to swell he told the crowd not only of how good HIGHLAND COCONUTS were but how bad LOWLAND COCONUTS were…….. they began to follow his chant …"HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"…… …"HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"…… over and over again…they began beating drums and singing the praises of HIGH COCO products not just during the meetings with Chief EURO but throughout the day as well..…..None of them stopped to think that every aspect of their prosperity depended on abundant LOWLAND COCONUTS. They did not think about the advantage they had over Chief EURO's people. The advantage that was tied to access to low cost, easy accessible LOWLAND COCONUTS…….. some of the Merican coconut pickers saw what was happening and spoke out appealing to reason. They shouted out the truth "THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOW and HIGHLAND COCONUTS!!!!"….there pleas were met with the drum beat and the chant "HIGH COCO GOOD LOW COCO BAD"……next they yelled out "THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH LOWLAND COCONUTS!!!!……some of the Mericans heard their shouting and looked on them with a disapproving frown and shouted back "YOU ARE UNENLIGHTENED!!!!!" and forced the pickers to live outside the village from then on…..They then returned to glassy eyed stares and the now religious chant …"HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"……
Every night chief EURO would gather everyone by the fire and they would join in chanting "HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"……….. for weeks everyone was chanting this over and over again…dancing and beating drums… the Merican, not wanting as much evil it their lives began consuming fewer and fewer "EVIL LOW COCO" products and living more fugally even though they were surrounded by abundance…..….then one night around the fire, chief EURO opened the bags he had brought from his island. Before their eyes he raised up for all the Mericans to behold in wonder……he held up the "H" branded coconut goods produced by his people at great cost and presented them as holy "GOOD HIGHLAND COCONUT" products……
The next day, no Merican wanted to buy anything but spiritually pure "HIGHLAND COCONUT PRODUCTS". They cost far more, and people could not afford to buy as many "GOOD COCONUT PRODUCTS" but they remembered the chant "HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"………In a few days the Mericans stopped buying the efficiently produced LOW COCO products altogether. Shortly thereafter, all the Merican coconut artisans demanded only highland coconuts be delivered to them to make HIGH COCO products. The people who made their living providing cheap abundant low cost lowland coconuts tried to explain that the coconuts were exactly the same as highland coconuts and there was nothing really wrong with the lowland coconuts in the first place. They even recruited the wisest men on the island to prove there was nothing wrong with the abundant low cost lowland coconuts….…..they were just met with the religious chanting "HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"….. After days of trying to convince the glassy eyed artisans, the pickers were forced to walk past the lowland trees and hike up to the mountains to provide highland coconuts to the artisans…a trip that would take five times as long as picking the lowland coconuts that were so easily accessible……That night the entire island raised up in cheers as the first "H" branded HIGHLAND coconut products were produced by the Merican coconut artisans…..…"HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD! …HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!" The Merican pickers now spent so much time climbing to the top of their mountain to pick Highland coconuts that they stopped cultivating the easy to access lowland trees and they began to waste away…….
Some of the Merican merchants looked at the huge pile of unwanted LOW COCO products sitting in the trash dump discarded by the artisans. They loaded them up in their canoes along with some of the new "H" products and rowed over to the island of the nameless unproductive people…….they would surely buy them …..after all, some of the LOW COCO products were made from their own coconuts…….. When they arrived on the unproductive island they were shocked to see BIG CHIEF EURO there leading a chant "HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"……….. "HIGH COCO GOOD…LOW COCO BAD!"……….the merchants did not even try to reason with the people of the unproductive island, they just dumped their low coco products over the side of their canoe into the sea. While they were there, they thought they might as well sell their new "H" coconut products……but much to their dismay, CHIEF EURO was there selling his people's product for the same price they could sell theirs…….. "HIGH COCO GOOD …LOW COCO BAD…."
As the Merican merchants paddled their canoe back home past the Merican wasting lowland coconut trees they did not see CHIEF EURO loading his canoe with cheap lowland coconuts abandoned as worthless by the unproductive people……..Chief EURO rowed his canoe toward home over flowing with coconuts. He smiled as he thought of how easily he had convinced the people of all the other islands to abandon their advantages and consume only high cost HIGH COCO products. This turned into open laughter as he thought of how those very same people were now willing to get by with less and pay more for the most expensive to produce products in the world…... when chief EURO thought of the Mericans, left to struggle to make HIGH COCO products while surrounded by a massive abundant supply of lowland coconuts they refused to use, he sang out at the top of his lungs in hilarity "HIGH COCO GOOD, LOW COCO BAD"…….
……the shrewd chief EURO returned to the PEAN people in triumph
