Eventually, Environmentalists Will Be Proven Right — Or Wrong

It’s the birthday of Geoffrey Chaucer, who gave us the rip-roaring stories comprising the Canterbury Tales.  Though I read them all senior year in high school in a marvelous English course called “Chaucer and Cummings,” (taught by my favorite teacher of all time, Joe Perrott), the only one I remember now is the hilariously vulgar “Miller’s Tale.”

I prefer the modern version of the last two lines:

And Nicolas is branded on the bum,

And God send us all to Kingdom Come.  

The relevance to clean energy, if there is one, exists in the fact that the story is really about humiliation, and this reminds me that, in the modern day battle between the environmentalists and the industrialists, it’s quite likely that history is going to prove one side or the other way wrong.

Obviously, most 2GreenEnergy readers and I agree that humankind’s current unsustainable approach to the consumption of resources is already creating untold damage, and that all this needs to stop if real catastrophe is to be averted.

But I suppose it’s possible that all our concerns about the environment are overblown and the biggest assault to human happiness will be seen as the fear, the regulation, and the life-style compromise imposed by those of us with environmental sensibilities.

In other words, with my stance as an environmentalist, I’m taking a chance of being “branded on the bum.”  But I regard that risk as extremely slight — one I’m certainly willing to take.