Jr. Patriot Report - October 2026
Chicken Little and the Electric Car
Have you ever heard the story of Chicken Little? It is an old European folk tale about what can happen when a large group starts believing something that isn't true.
The story is about an easily frightened chicken called Chicken Little. One day, while he is out pecking around under an oak tree, an acorn falls and hits him. Instead of stopping and thinking about what happened, Chicken Little jumps to the conclusion that the sky is falling. He runs around the farm yelling that the “sky is falling” and that they must warn the king. As he runs, he gathers a following of other animals that believe him without question. As the mob of little animals run off to warn the king that the sky is falling, they are joined by a fox. The fox can see the sky is definitely not falling but decides to take advantage of the situation. One by one, the fox makes a meal out of the panicked and silly little animals.
Chicken Little and his friends didn't meet their doom for no reason. Chicken Little definitely did get hit by something. But by not thinking things through and looking for alternatives, they were lost. We have many people in our government and news reporters that believe we are doing irreversible harm to our environment by using gasoline powered engines in our cars and motorcycles. They are convinced that we all must use only electric vehicles and equipment, no matter the cost or whether or not such vehicles and equipment even exist. The cost of such a change, whether money or human suffering, does not concern them, since “the sky is falling” and we must do something immediately or the world will end.
In a Buddhist version of the Chicken Little story, the animals are led by a silly rabbit and encounter a lion instead of the fox. The lion stops the silly mob and asks them to check to see if the sky is really falling. When they see it is not, the lion reminds them to stop and think about what they are doing before they go off doing things that aren't needed. Pollution and global warming are very real things and need real solutions. ABATE of Wisconsin and other like-minded organizations want to see those real solutions. The future is almost certainly electric vehicles, but getting to that future is going to require a combination of electric and fossil fuel power. Our future should be with well thought out plans and not “the sky is falling” panic.
John
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