I've always enjoyed a good fable. There's something about a story passed down through generations that hits different than a research paper or a policy brief. Lately I keep coming back to one in particular: the Two Wolves.
If you haven't heard it, here it is:
In a time long ago, a wise grandparent sat by the fire, watching his young grandchild play. The child seemed troubled.
Sensing an opportunity to teach a lesson, the grandparent said, "My child, inside each of us, there is a battle going on between two wolves."
The child looked up with curiosity. "Two wolves?"
The elder nodded. "Yes, two wolves. One wolf is evil and represents anger, jealousy, greed, arrogance, and lies. The other wolf is good and stands for love, joy, peace, kindness, humility, and truth."
The young child pondered this for a moment, then asked, "Which wolf will win?"
The wise grandparent leaned in, looked into the child's eyes, and said, "The one you feed."
Two Energy Wolves
This is such a great story because it's the perfect way to think about energy. We've got two wolves in the energy fight too.
One wolf runs on burning things: coal, oil, gas, wood and trash. Smoky, polluting in ways you don't always see. The other wolf runs on sun, wind, and water. It's not perfect, but it doesn't poison the air we breathe and it doesn't run out.
Here's what the fable doesn't really get into: feeding a wolf takes work. You can't just nod along when somebody says renewables are great and call it a day. The wolf gets fed by what we actually do. What we vote for. What we buy. Where our electricity comes from. Whether we push our ourselves, our landlord, our city council, our utility, or our politicians to do better.
That's the catch. It's also the good news. If the outcome depends on what we feed, then we're not bystanders here. We have a say.
The only real question is how fast we feed it.
And feeding it doesn't have to be heroic. It can look like supporting clean energy where you live if you can't put panels on your roof. Voting for people who take this seriously. Talking about it at dinner instead of pretending it isn't happening. Small stuff, mostly. But that's what feeding a wolf looks like. One meal at a time.
Which wolf one are you feeding?
So that's the real question the grandparent was asking. Not which wolf is stronger. Not which wolf deserves to win. Which one are you going to feed?