Environmental Stewardship, part 2

God, the Creator of all things, rules over all and deserves our worship and adoration (Ps. 103:19-22).

The essay, from Environmental Stewardship, contrasts the biblical role of the environment, one where man is given a special role as steward, to what some environmentalists believe, that all creatures are equal. The other aspect of environmentalism is to look at history. What actions as a group cause environmental issue and what helps the environment?

The freer, wealthier coutnries have experience consistent reductions in pollution and improvements in their environment, while the less free, poorer countries have experience increasing environmental degradation.

The essay spends a whole section going over the benefits that we have seen in the last few centuries. It then shows how economic and environmental trends relate. There is a correlation between the economic development of countries and the environment. When a country has quite poor and no economy, there is little pollution. As their economy grows, there is an increase in pollution. This is natural because you have people that are most worried about survival -- not about the environment. But once they reach a certain level, the environment starts to improve, and, after time will be better than when they were a poor country.

Paul Erlich postulated that as population grew, affluence increased, and technology increased, you would see an increase in pollution. Emperical evidence has proved this wrong. In fact, there is an inverse correlation between these factors and pollution.

The essay next talks about some of the current environmental concerns: population growth, global warming, and rapid species extinction.

Go to the Acton Website if you want more info or to order the book Environmental Stewardship. This is a great start if you are concerned about the well being of the earth and the poor. And, in fact, people will die because of poor policy decisions. The essay has an estimate of 19,300 to 30,000 premature deaths per year in the United States if the Kyoto Protocol were fully adopted.