A few days ago, the Hawaiian-born Pineapple Express spread its seemingly unending sheets of rain across the Pacific Northwest. The rivers breached their banks and ran yellow-brown with silt, trees, roots, sand, rocks, minerals, houses and every other imaginable compound or man-made item that makes its home along the river bank, or adjoining lands. People were driven from their homes. Roads were cut and bridges were blown out. Some folks were trapped by the high water. Thousands of Isolated animals drowned in lakes made by the flood. Salmon-spawning beds were washed away, or silted up. Many fish were carried out to sea by the strong currents. Some were left high and dry when the water receded. Dry land was inundated with several feet of water and most plants and trapped animals died. But when the Sun returns in the Spring and warms the moist earth, new life is born in the enriched soil, left behind by the flood, just as it has for millions of years, without the intervention of "man".

Hurricanes and tornadoes tear up or alter the landscape beyond recognition. (Katrina/New Orleans 2005) As we saw in December of 2004, an earthquake-triggered tsunamis devastated thousands of miles of India, Thailand and Indonesian coast line, for thousands of feet inland. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Property damage was un-measureable. Each year volcanoes erupt molten lava and hot noxious gases, ash and other toxic debris into our atmosphere, that have the power to change world climate for years. Pyroclastic flows sweep down the mountainside at hundreds of miles per hour, searing and enveloping everything in its wake. In 1815, an Island in the Pacific exploded with such fury into the atmosphere that 1816 became the year without a summer. In 1883, when the Pacific Island Volcano Krakatoa annihilated itself in a gaseous-magma explosion, over 36,000 people were killed on Krakatoa and neighboring Islands. In the year 79 AD, Mount Vesuvius, in present day Italy, entombed the towns of Pompeii and Herculaneum forever. It happened so fast, there was no escape. People were instantly encapsulated in hot ash, while going about their daily routines.

Earthquakes shake buildings into rubble as the earth trembles violently and reverberates across the land. Some parts of the Earth are scorched by the relentless Sun that turns the sand into a granular frying pan. The dry, parched soil separates in irregular cracks, as any remaining moisture is heat-baked out of the soil. Upon occasion asteroids or comets bore into the Earth's mantle at terrifying speeds, ejecting huge plumes of rock, hot gases, water vapor and other life-ending material, that have the potential for massive species extinction. Just ask the dinosaurs.

12,000 years ago, a blink of an eye in geologic time, one-third of the Earth's surface was covered in a sheet of ice over one mile thick. There were no trees, lakes, rivers, wetlands, plants, animals (or Al Gore's polar bears), birds and insects that existed there. Around 10,000 years ago, the Earth began to warm up and the ice dams broke, sending monster waves of water across flatland and prairie, down canyons, scouring deep gouges in the land. Every animate and inanimate thing in its path were erased or buried under hundreds of feet of silt and mud. But somehow the Earth survived without all those wetlands, lakes, rivers, plants, animals, insect and birds. Every wetland we save today by draconian land use regulations, is a drop in the proverbial bucket, compared to the wetlands that didn't exist during the iceage of 12,000 years ago.

Since the Earth was formed some 4.5 billions years ago, 99.9% of every species that ever existed, went extinct. And we spend billons trying to save species that will probably go extinct anyway, in spite of our futile, infantile efforts. (i.e. the Northwest Spotted Owl) In the process, we rob American citizens of their constitutionally-guaranteed property rights, their livelihood and their dignity.

The hard, cold, unalterable fact is, what we have described above, is just Mother Nature at work. Man has no power to do any of these things. No matter what man does, it is puny in comparison to what havoc Mother Nature can reek upon her planet. The trillions of dollars we spend, that is taken out of our economy, and the regulations we promulgate to supposedly repair or prevent the damage that man does, are in most cases an absolute waste of resource. And no, we are not advocating that we pollute our environment with every kind of toxic chemical we can create. Common sense environmental protection makes good common sense and we have existing laws to punish the perpetrators of true environmental damage.

And further, the so-called apocalypse of global warming is man-made, the-sky-is-falling propaganda, to exert ever more control over the people and to remove their rights and their God-given freedom. The government and the scientist-lobbyist that are paid by government, manufacture this man-is-the-cause of all environmental evils, for a not-so-hidden agenda. They sell it by advertising. It permeates the airways. It has become the rallying cry for a certain political party. It has infiltrated our schools and colleges and the news media is the "carrier" of this apparition of green disease. Man's effect on the atomosphere pales in comparison to what Mother Nature can do to it.

The National Center for Public Policy Research gave this statement: We recognizes both that global temperatures have risen over the past 150 years and that anthropogenic (man-made) greenhouse gas emissions contribute to the greenhouse effect. But The National Center also believes, based on the evidence that currently exists, that any anthropogenic signature is likely to be modest; that significant scientific uncertainty remains on the effects of any warming that may occur; and that current efforts to sharply reduce greenhouse gas emissions may prove ineffective while imposing enormous burdens on the world's poor.

100 years ago, there were dairy farms all around the rivers of Washington and Oregon. There were no manure lagoons or any other attempts to control animal waste products from entering the environment, or waterways. And yet every year, rivers were gorged with spawning salmon. So it couldn't have been man-made pollution or habitat degradation that has depleted our current salmon runs. Could it be that we are harvesting way too many salmon at sea today? Could it be that we are at a natural low cycle of salmon runs, due to many other factors that have absolutely nothing to do with man or habitat? Could it be the Sun, ocean temperatures or currents, volcanoes, or other variables over which we have no knowledge, much less control effect Salmon runs? Or could it be all of these things?

There is hard, scientific evidence that says a 25-foot buffer around any river, lake, stream, ocean or wetland is more than adequate to protect them. But environmentalists demand and lobby government for 300 and 450-foot buffers. Ludicrous! Saving every wetland and forcing by regulation draconian habitat buffers, are nothing more than an excuse by government and radical environmentalists to control people and their land. The cost of this policy is in the trillions of dollars. Under current environmental regulations not one city in the U. S. could have been built. President Eisenhower's policy to pave America with freeways, would have been too costly at the time and these vital transportation arteries would have never been built, as well.

Environmentalists have seriously disrupted a free society to provide the resources necessary to keep that society going economically. Environmentalists have stopped drilling for oil in areas of known oil reserves, thus making us more dependent on foreign sources and driving up the cost of oil and oil-associated products, accordingly. Environmentalists have stopped oil refineries and nuclear power plants from being built for almost 30 years. Environmentalists have forced 18 different grades of gasoline, further complicating limited refinery capacity. Ethanol costs $0.39 more per gallon to make than it saves. All these reasons are why a gallon of gas is now over $2.00 and will not likely come down and that's why our power capacity is at or near maximum. Blackouts and brownouts are inevitable during peak demand.

Environmentalists, in concert with radical international environmentalists, are trying to lock up private lands in the U. S. for biospheres and wildlife corridors, without compensating the owners of the private lands they want to take. Why? The unnecessary cost for overt and radical environmental protection has been in the Trillions of dollars since it became in vogue over 30 years ago and it has severely weakened our economic engine, reduced our power capacity and eroded our constitutional form of government, almost beyond repair.

Almost anything that man attempts to save the environment, one way or another, will be trumped by Mother Nature. And yet, gullible, uninformed and naive citizens buy into this environmental propaganda. They then get on the bandwagon and champion the cause, all the while being led around by the nose by the perpetrators of this mindless, the-sky-is-falling, green-usurps-everything, travesty.

The cult of environmental extremism is killing this country. When will we call these propagandists for what they are, charlatans and con men? When will we wise up, rise up and take back our streets, our land and our government? If we delay much longer, it will be too late. The enemy already has a 40-year head start. Man may not be able to tame Mother Nature, but we sure as Hell can make sure our freedom isn't taken away from us by an out-of-control government and the social and environmental special interests that lobby them.

Ron Ewart, President

NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS

P. O. Box 1031, Issaquah, WA 98027

425 222-4742 or 1 800 682-7848

(Fax No. 425 222-4743)

Website: www.narlo.org

"THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF RURAL LANDOWNERS"

The National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO) is a non-profit corporation, duly licensed in the State of Washington. It was formed in response to draconian land use ordinances that were passed by King County in Washington State (Seattle) in the late Fall of 2004, after vociferous opposition from rural landowners. NARLO's mission is to begin the long process of restoring, preserving and protecting Constitutional property rights and returning this country to a Constitutional Republic. Government has done a great job of dividing us up into little battle groups where we are essentially impotent at a national level. We will change all that with the noisy voices and the vast wealth tied up in the land of the American rural landowner. The land is our power, if we will just use that power, before we lose it. We welcome donations and volunteers who believe as we do, that government abuses against rural landowners have gone on for far too long and a day of reckoning is at hand. To learn more, visit our website at www.narlo.org.

President Roosevelt, in his 1933 inaugural address said, “…. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”. I maintain that the only thing we have to fear is unbridled government. The only way unbridled government can exist is if WE THE PEOPLE allow it. Unfortunately, we have.