What ‘Parents for Wholesome TV’ should really be lobbying against is: reruns of The Andy Griffith Show.

Seriously.

Our travels took us to Peebles, Ohio recently. And at the Village Restaurant there I noticed a black & white poster that read: “The Andy Griffith Show… 1960 – 1968… 247 episodes.” The accompanying picture was of Andy (in jeans and a flannel shirt) escorting his son Opie down to the creek for some fishing.

For many, the scene would evoke all kinds of warm, nostalgic feelings.

Not for me.

Here’s why.

With the advent of shows like The Andy Griffith Show, many father and son trips to the creek started to diminish in kind.

Now parents started spending much of this time in the living room having “virtual,” one-dimensional relationships with these TV characters, as opposed to more “quality,” three-dimensional relationships with, well, their kids.

And as a former counselor, I know as this quality time lessens, youth grow up with all kinds of emotional holes. Holes they later try to fill with drugs, alcohol, sex, compulsive shopping, compulsive work habits, more relationships with yet more of these one dimensional TV characters…

Just step back and look around society.

What’s more, it’s my contention The Andy Griffith Show is also responsible for: global warming.

Stay with me on this.

By starting to spend more and more time in temperature-controlled rooms merely watching nature (Andy and Opie at the creek, and so on) through a TV screen, we started to develop an increasing aversion to being out in the natural elements.

“Biophobia,” David Orr calls it.

Orr is the author of Earth in Mind and the head of the Environmental Studies Department at Oberlin College in Ohio.

During a research trip to Oberlin several years ago, Orr told me that often these days the closest people consistently come to nature is the Weather Channel (or, again, Andy and Opie at the creek).

Nature has almost become the “enemy,” said Orr.

And if you look at nature as the enemy, how much do you really care about ‘saving it?’ So acid rain continues to fall almost unchecked, species continue to vanish, urban sprawl continues to sprawl, and the polar ice caps keep melting under mounting global warming.

And if all that isn’t bad enough, if you’re watching Andy and Opie in a temperature-controlled room -- instead of walking down to the creek with Junior -- this means somebody somewhere is burning fossil fuels so you can stay warm, cool. Fossil fuels that gives off nitrogen oxides, adding significantly to the greenhouse gas thing.

And how environmentally ‘wholesome’ is all this?

Now I could go on, explaining why The Andy Griffith Show is also responsible for the skyrocketing divorce rate in America, increasing crime on the streets, and so on. But why belabor the point.

And the point is this: It’s not the television shows, whether the sex and violence laced prime time shows of now or the Andy Griffith Shows of yesteryear. It’s the whole medium, read: TV itself. (A medium the average American family is now watching some 50 hours a week.)

Or put yet another way: It’s choosing to allow Andy to take our children (and us) fishing -- when we could go ourselves.

Average Joe Schriner writes about common sense from the back roads of America.