Earth Day 2012

I'm not a treehugger.  I don't worship Gaia.  I don't believe in preservation of the natural state at the expense of humanity.

I do consider myself to be environmentally conscious.  I believe in God who the Bible tells us created this earth and then gave us the responsibility for it and everything in it.  I believe that implies conservation which is the wise utilization of resources, not preservation which implies non-use of resources.

So what.

We live in a world gone crazy where a minnow is considered more important than a human.  We abort human babies and spend millions of dollars to study the decline of an insect.  We build country estates on prime farm and ranch land, force agriculture overseas to countries who do not have the technological know-how to produce as much from their land as we do and don't have the infrastructure to get their products to market and then watch as people starve in other countries because of corrupt governments, lack of agricultural infrastructure and shortage of food because of perverse political motives.

We see rhinos killed for their horns so that wealthy Asians can grind them into powder and make a magic cure-all.  We see elephants destroyed for their tusks for who-knows what purpose.  We see other wildlife poached to extinction -- and it's all for the sake of the almighty dollar.  Then, in a misguided attempt to save an animal, we protect feral horses running on public lands until they over-populate and die of starvation.

There's a balance somewhere.

Common sense no longer is common.

Instead of the extremism of opposing views on these issues, there is an answer somewhere in the middle.  To achieve that will require reasoned dialogue driven by statesmen, not ideologues.  Ah, but therein is the real problem.  I sometimes wonder if we have allowed statesmen to become extinct.  They have been replaced by an invading species driven by greed and motivated purely by self-interest.  It's time to cultivate a few statesmen.  Hmmm.....that brings up an interesting thought; cultivation is part of conservation, not preservation.  If left in its natural state, the desired species are often crowded out by the weeds.  It's time to do a little cultivating......(Bet you didn't realize this was going to be a political statement did you?)