Coal-fired Power Plants And the Metaphors We Use To Describe Them

Maybe I’m the only member of an aging population who grimaces when young people today show that they don’t really understand the metaphors that had meaning in the 20^th Century.  Here are two:

An “elephant in the room” and an “800-pound gorilla.”  The former means an obvious but awkward truth that the people present would rather ignore than address.  The latter simply means a powerful force; it’s the subject of the riddle: “Where does an 800-pound gorilla sleep?” Punch line: “Anywhere it wants.”

Here’s an important article about super-polluting coal-fired power plants that was sent to me with the (incorrect) subject line: “This power plant is the elephant in the room.”