There has to be a better way to “save the environment” than by driving a wine-powered Aston Martin Volante convertible. But, if you’re a prince and you need to get around a giant estate in the summer, well, hey, I just said “if you’re a prince.” Eco-friendly Prince Charles has either purchased more alternative fuel cars or is the process of purchasing more to add to that decade-old DB6 MKII Aston Martin.* Anyway, the June, 2018, story by Anna Mikhailova in The Telegraph online, reveals that the prince and Kimbal Musk have arranged to add an electric car to the royal fleet.** Let me repeat that last word in case you didn’t read it: Fleet. How you doin’ with your fleet?
Maybe it’s a test. The Green Prince is our Green Knight, you remember, Bercilak de Hautdesert, the guy Morgan le Fay transformed into the Green Giant to sell vegetables to King Arthur for biofuel and to test the purity of Sir Gawain (Did you cut yourself shaving?) Anyway, our Prince Charles has access to Bentleys, Land and Range Rovers, Audis, Rolls Royces, and, well, did I mention he was a prince? What’s obviously next? A Tesla, of course.
Prince Charles presents us with a green challenge? Look at all the wonderful things he does for the environment like drive a wine-powered or an electric car. Simple, yet somehow understated luxury and elegance, right? And you’ve got to have more than one, don’t you? Can’t show up in princely garb for some special event in a sports car. Definitely, that calls for a Rolls or Bentley—and he doesn’t have to worry about mechanical failure because his mum learned to be a mechanic during the war. (Don’t know whether she’s kept up on all these new-fangled computer-run cars, but she’s smart enough to learn; queens can be multifaceted individuals)
The prince is concerned about the environment. If nothing else makes him noble to people outside England, that fact should. It’s just that his version of environmentalism is based on the wherewithal to be ecofriendly while living in palaces large enough to enclose a village plus your home and while having garages big enough to house all the “naturally living” bush people of Namibia. Yes, the prince would like to “be one with Nature,” an ideal that was implanted in minds during the rise of nineteenth-century Romanticism and landscape artists.
We all face a test of purity from a Green Knight, and the prince does as well. No, unlike Gawain we don’t have to bare our necks for two feigned blows of the Green Knight’s sword and one actual blow that simply nicks our necks (Did you cut yourself shaving, Gawain?). Any of us who say we are in favor of the environment face a daily test. What do we require for living the lifestyle we live?
What’s your material and energy use? How much garbage do you produce daily through your lifestyle of convenience and relative luxury. Yeah! Luxury. How many cars are in your fleet? How many TVs, computers, radios, and other electronic devices do you own? How many of them run on standby, still consuming energy while you’re off driving your wine-powered Aston Martin?
You could easily argue that all this is relative, that because you aren’t a relative of a queen, you weren’t born into inordinate wealth with a personal secretary dubbed “Sir” like Charlie’s. You don’t have the luxury of telling those who support this estate or that about having the royal cows feed on grass to save on flatulence that grains generate in those two stomachs. And you don’t have enough cash on hand to convert your aging Dodge, Chevy, or Ford into an alternative-fuel car you might use for limited mileage in summer. You would be right to make those points.
But, again, it’s all relative, isn’t it? Because the prince has all that stuff and manpower at his disposal, he can choose his green life; he can ostensibly pass test by Greenies. “I’m doing my best with what I have,” he might say. We can acknowledge that the poor guy was fated to have all that stuff and that his true nobility lies in how he tries to live a life of imposed luxury in a green way. He’s not hypocritical is he, if he was born a royal?
And the rest of us? What’s our test? Are any of us somewhat hypocritical? There’s a Green Knight sent to test all of us regularly. He shows up once a week in a big truck—sometimes a green one—stops outside where we live, and picks up what we throw out. And he (or she) like garbage collectors everywhere, then takes what we have used and no longer need or want and drives it to a garbage dump, where it accumulates and accumulates and accumulates.
“I drive a hybrid,” you say. “So, don’t accuse me of hypocrisy. I’m doing my best for the environment. Morgan le Fay doesn’t have to send anyone to test me. I don’t even use wrapping paper when I give someone something, and I put my groceries in reusable bags. I’m not the one killing ocean life with plastic.”
Nevertheless, she does. If any of us claim that we truly care for the environment and that we live “green” lives, we have a daily test with four questions: 1) What do we use? 2) How much do we use? 3) What happens to it when we’re done using it? And 4) How much energy do we consume in our use, including the energy required to produce and eventually store or destroy what we used? Many of us will come out of this test with a bit more than a nick in the neck.***
*English, Rebecca for the Daily Mail. Prince Charles converts his beloved Aston martin to a green machine…run on English wine. June 30, 2008. Online at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030611/Prince-Charles-converts-beloved-Aston-Martin-green-machine--run-English-wine.html
**Mikhailova, Anna, Exclusive: Prince Charles planning to add electric cars to royal fleet. The Telegraph, June, 2018. Online at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/06/15/exclusive-prince-charles-planning-add-electric-cars-royal-fleet/
***Thanks for turning off your computer or tablet when you have finished reading this. You know that other people just leave theirs on for convenience. The seven or so billion of us have two billion computers, some more efficient than others, but none of them are as efficient in energy and carbon savings as one that is turned off.
Maybe it’s a test. The Green Prince is our Green Knight, you remember, Bercilak de Hautdesert, the guy Morgan le Fay transformed into the Green Giant to sell vegetables to King Arthur for biofuel and to test the purity of Sir Gawain (Did you cut yourself shaving?) Anyway, our Prince Charles has access to Bentleys, Land and Range Rovers, Audis, Rolls Royces, and, well, did I mention he was a prince? What’s obviously next? A Tesla, of course.
Prince Charles presents us with a green challenge? Look at all the wonderful things he does for the environment like drive a wine-powered or an electric car. Simple, yet somehow understated luxury and elegance, right? And you’ve got to have more than one, don’t you? Can’t show up in princely garb for some special event in a sports car. Definitely, that calls for a Rolls or Bentley—and he doesn’t have to worry about mechanical failure because his mum learned to be a mechanic during the war. (Don’t know whether she’s kept up on all these new-fangled computer-run cars, but she’s smart enough to learn; queens can be multifaceted individuals)
The prince is concerned about the environment. If nothing else makes him noble to people outside England, that fact should. It’s just that his version of environmentalism is based on the wherewithal to be ecofriendly while living in palaces large enough to enclose a village plus your home and while having garages big enough to house all the “naturally living” bush people of Namibia. Yes, the prince would like to “be one with Nature,” an ideal that was implanted in minds during the rise of nineteenth-century Romanticism and landscape artists.
We all face a test of purity from a Green Knight, and the prince does as well. No, unlike Gawain we don’t have to bare our necks for two feigned blows of the Green Knight’s sword and one actual blow that simply nicks our necks (Did you cut yourself shaving, Gawain?). Any of us who say we are in favor of the environment face a daily test. What do we require for living the lifestyle we live?
What’s your material and energy use? How much garbage do you produce daily through your lifestyle of convenience and relative luxury. Yeah! Luxury. How many cars are in your fleet? How many TVs, computers, radios, and other electronic devices do you own? How many of them run on standby, still consuming energy while you’re off driving your wine-powered Aston Martin?
You could easily argue that all this is relative, that because you aren’t a relative of a queen, you weren’t born into inordinate wealth with a personal secretary dubbed “Sir” like Charlie’s. You don’t have the luxury of telling those who support this estate or that about having the royal cows feed on grass to save on flatulence that grains generate in those two stomachs. And you don’t have enough cash on hand to convert your aging Dodge, Chevy, or Ford into an alternative-fuel car you might use for limited mileage in summer. You would be right to make those points.
But, again, it’s all relative, isn’t it? Because the prince has all that stuff and manpower at his disposal, he can choose his green life; he can ostensibly pass test by Greenies. “I’m doing my best with what I have,” he might say. We can acknowledge that the poor guy was fated to have all that stuff and that his true nobility lies in how he tries to live a life of imposed luxury in a green way. He’s not hypocritical is he, if he was born a royal?
And the rest of us? What’s our test? Are any of us somewhat hypocritical? There’s a Green Knight sent to test all of us regularly. He shows up once a week in a big truck—sometimes a green one—stops outside where we live, and picks up what we throw out. And he (or she) like garbage collectors everywhere, then takes what we have used and no longer need or want and drives it to a garbage dump, where it accumulates and accumulates and accumulates.
“I drive a hybrid,” you say. “So, don’t accuse me of hypocrisy. I’m doing my best for the environment. Morgan le Fay doesn’t have to send anyone to test me. I don’t even use wrapping paper when I give someone something, and I put my groceries in reusable bags. I’m not the one killing ocean life with plastic.”
Nevertheless, she does. If any of us claim that we truly care for the environment and that we live “green” lives, we have a daily test with four questions: 1) What do we use? 2) How much do we use? 3) What happens to it when we’re done using it? And 4) How much energy do we consume in our use, including the energy required to produce and eventually store or destroy what we used? Many of us will come out of this test with a bit more than a nick in the neck.***
*English, Rebecca for the Daily Mail. Prince Charles converts his beloved Aston martin to a green machine…run on English wine. June 30, 2008. Online at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1030611/Prince-Charles-converts-beloved-Aston-Martin-green-machine--run-English-wine.html
**Mikhailova, Anna, Exclusive: Prince Charles planning to add electric cars to royal fleet. The Telegraph, June, 2018. Online at https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2018/06/15/exclusive-prince-charles-planning-add-electric-cars-royal-fleet/
***Thanks for turning off your computer or tablet when you have finished reading this. You know that other people just leave theirs on for convenience. The seven or so billion of us have two billion computers, some more efficient than others, but none of them are as efficient in energy and carbon savings as one that is turned off.
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