Legend says that if you displeased the King of Siam, he would give you a white elephant. These rare and protected elephants were incredibly expensive to keep. So a “White Elephant” came to mean a possession that is useless, troublesome, expensive to maintain and difficult to dispose of - like a Sacred Cow, but much bigger.
Today the deluded rulers of the Western world are gifting us and future generations with plagues of Green Elephants – useless, expensive, protected, green rubbish.