Soap Box

For well over a century there has been a contingency of people who have made dire predictions about changing weather patterns and their effect on the earth.

They have vacillated between global warming that would melt the polar ice caps and a new ice age which would see the skyscrapers in New York frozen over, catastrophic flooding or frozen oceans and have even predicted what areas of the planet would be the most adversely effected and how many of the food growing regions would no longer be arable and how vast numbers of the population would starve.

They tell us that if we would just be willing to part with more of our hard earned money and vote the right people into office, this problem could be dealt with and mankind can relax and go into the future with the assurance that the planet is in good, compassionate and capable hands, catastrophe averted.

In my mind, we definitely need to clean our world up, we need to purify our water and take care of our forests but I don't believe that putting thousands of acres of land and waters off limits for the benefit of the spotted owl or snail darter is the answer to our problems.

My father was a timber man and if you want to find a true conservationist look for somebody who makes his living harvesting timber, because if it does not renew itself he is out of business.

My Dad took meticulous care of the woods and the uncountable acres of wood lots he harvested timber in continued to be a renewable resource and a place of natural beauty, a partnership between man and nature, working together to sustain the health of the land.

Dumping sewage and industrial waste into rivers and streams is not only a bad idea it's stupid and cleaning up the smoke and other by products of industry needs to be dealt with, but not with the haste and regulations that destroys the way of life of the people who have for generations made their living in the coal mines and oil fields.

There is no quick fix to the very real ecological problems that exist, but the one size fits all, punish the innocent along with the guilty and make America a national park from the Smokies to the Rockies approach is not only impractical, it�s unproductive and certainly no answer to the problems the planet faces.

And why is so much emphasis being put on America when it is one of the least offenders?

It's simple, this move is much more about money and the centralization of power than it is about cleaning up the planet and the scope needed to grasp and maintain that goal cannot be reached without the cooperation of the richest and most advanced nation on earth.

America has had it's share of ecological screw ups over the years but we're miles ahead of most of the rest of the world and if the powers that be are serious about cleansing the earth why wouldn't they begin with the real problems.

In Brazil the vast rain forests, which have a huge ecological effect on earth, are being systematically destroyed, cut down and hauled away along with a treasure trove of plants with unknown medical and scientific uses. How about starting there.

There are whole areas of Africa where the vegetation has been destroyed, the land eroded, the trees all cut for fuel and the topsoil blown away. Start there.

I have personally seen the pollution in China so thick it resembles ground fog and I understand India is much the same. Start there.

North Korea is almost totally deforested, the people existing on roots or bark or anything else that's remotely edible. Start there.

The critically outdated industrial equipment in the Ukraine pours pollutants into the air at an alarming rate, the air in Moscow is said to be the worst in the world, Nigeria is an ecological disaster and there�s no telling what Mexico pumps into the atmosphere and waters.

And this is just the crust of the problem.

I am not worried about global warming because I believe that the temperature of this planet always has been and always will be controlled by its Creator, but the polluting and overfishing of our waters and the deforesting and mismanagement of our lands are very real problems and to change that on the international basis it would require overhauling the political landscape of much of the world.

So, Mr. President, how about aiming your rhetoric at the major offenders instead of the people of this nation, because it's not us.

And the next time you go on a world tour, maybe instead of bowing you can stand up tall, look these people in the eye and say,

"Guys we've got a problem"

Might be a start.

What do you think?

Pray for our troops and the peace of Jerusalem.

God Bless America

Charlie Daniels