Site Presented By
Tuesday, Nov 10, 2009
You refer to the "common ground" you have with some environmental organizations on the left. And yet you are affiliated with many people and organizations on the right -- Rush Limbaugh, the NRA, the Republican Party -- who are not perceived to have an interest in environmental preservation. How does that work?
Just today I spent an hour on the phone with an organization I've been a life member of for 20 years. This is the National Wildlife Foundation. They are on the frontlines of preserving air, water and soil quality. I am workin' hand in hand with many Michigan and national conservation and environmental organizations to educate and activate Americans to the pivotal issue of air, soil and water quality.
I do not feel disconnected from the true environmentalists. Here's what I have to say: If you turn on a light, you are mining for coal. If you have ever used a consumer product in your life -- which is everybody -- then you are drilling for oil. I would challenge your readers to ask them who among you has planted more than a hundred thousand trees with their own hands? Who amongst my critics has donated literally millions and millions of dollars to save critical wildlife habitat?
It all gets down to the fact that all those who criticize me are a bunch of hippies and hypocrites. And I'd like to ask them: Do you want to feel good, or do you want to do good?
I'll never forget this time when I was on "Politically Incorrect," and I met this Butterfly gal [Julia Butterfly Hill]. She had just come down from spending a year in a tree. I shook her hand, and I said, "Congratulations. You've got balls, kid. I like that." But during the time she was sitting in that tree, my Ted Nugent Kamp for Kids charity program planted over 50,000 trees. And I've got to ask you: Would you rather spend 10 years sitting in one tree, or 10 years planting over 10,000,000 trees? We have the figures back, and they say that by the spring of '99, my Kamp for Kids and other hunting, sporting and conservation groups were responsible for planting over 10 million trees. So I'd like to ask my critics: How many trees have you planted? How many acres of wildlife habitat have you restored?
So I don't see a disconnect at all. I am the most connected person there may be. I defy you to come up with someone who has done more for the environment than I have.
Mostly, my critics are just idiots. Last week, I was being interviewed on BBC radio, and this guy comes on and says, "You are affiliated with the NRA. You tell people to hunt deer with Uzis."
And I say, What in God's name are you talking about? No one in the history of the world has tried to hunt deer with an Uzi. The NRA is the organization who would stop people from doing such a foolish thing.
How do you feel about the environmental record of the Bush administration and the Republican party?
George W's record is good. He did an amazing job in Texas with improving the air, soil and water quality. Of course, there is room for improvement. But when it comes to policy, there is always the pragmatic issue of balancing environmental upgrades with the American Dream. If we really adopted all the policies proposed by Greenpeace and the Sierra Club and Ralph Nader, the American Dream would come to a screeching halt. It would look the Ukraine in 1965. It would be worse than the Dust Bowl Era in the '30s.
We all know that pollution is a problem, but you could see a dramatic environmental upgrade without spending one increased dime if we just enforced the existing laws we have honestly and effectively. We need to demand that industry lives up to the laws we've already got in place. It's not about being on the left or the right, but about confronting corruption in the industry and government. We have to get people involved. If everyone living downstream from a stinky river went to the stinky company upstream and demanded that they shut down, we would see results. I've seen it right here in Michigan. The Rouge River is the river in which I was first baptized into the spirit of the wild. In the '60s, Lake Erie was so polluted it would catch on fire. Now it provides the greatest walleye fishing in the world.
We the people did that. Not by pissing and moaning. We did it by being activists with intelligent, practical, yet intensely demanded upgrade. But I hate to see the federal government pushed and shoved by so-called environmental protection regulations. There are farmers who see their farms confiscated because a little patch of cat tails starts growing on their land. One season a muskrat shits a cattail seed and suddenly their farms are classified as a wetland! Give me a break! That's not a wetland! It's a puddle! These are the kind of atrocities promoted by groups like Greenpeace, but it has nothing to do with environmental protection. It's just people jacking off so they can feel good.
Do you know how they test to see if fish are edible? They take the whole, live fish and throw it in a blender. Then you are testing the brains, the eyeballs, the spine, the guts, the backbone. But I don't eat any of those parts! I only eat the meat. If you want to test to see if a fish is fit for human consumption, you should test only the parts that humans consume. The purity of the fish in the Great Lakes has increased dramatically since the 1950s. But then we hear all these scare stories about mercury levels in fish eyeballs. Who gives a shit? I don't eat fish eyeballs! I'm not the extremist here, I am the moderate. I say to all the environmentalists, if you test your shit, you will probably find mercury levels in there too. Why? Because your body throws out the toxins. And unless you are planning to eat your own shit, you have nothing to worry about.
Decades ago, the environmentalists adopted a bird as their symbol -- the condor. The hunters got a bird too -- the wild turkey. When the environmentalists adopted the condor, there were a couple dozen left in existence. And today, there are still a couple dozen. When the hunters adopted the wild turkey, there were a couple thousand. Now there are more than 20 million wild turkeys in North America. Today, we kill more wild turkey each year in Michigan alone during the legal hunting season than there were in existence in the 20s and 30s. And that's with regulations to harvest just the surplus!
Look at Africa. After they banned the hunting of elephant and lions, the Africans started using their habitat to grow mangos and peaches and dates. It happens everywhere: Once you ban hunting, a species loses its value. People would just as soon use the land to grow cotton, because cotton has more value than the wildlife.
Just last week, Rush Limbaugh and I celebrated a truth on the radio: If you want to save a species, simply decide to eat it. Then it will be managed -- like chickens, like turkeys, like deer, like Canadian geese.
