Environmental Stewardship, conclusion

To conclude the notes on Environmental Stewardship published by the Acton Institute, they offered some solutions. One was that private property rights, when properly adopted, can lead to a better environment. The aspects of private property must be a legal system that honors exclusitivity, liability, and transferability.

Here are excerpts from the Conclusion of the essay on A Biblical Perspective on Environmental Stewardship:

Patrick Moore, one of the founders of Greenpeace International, said in an interview in the New Scientist in December 1999, "The environmental movement abandoned science and logic somewhere in the mid-1980s ... political activists were using environmental rhetoric to cover up agendas that had more to do with class warfare and anti-corporatism than with the actual science..."

... we ... believe that reason, coupled with a commitment to "do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with ... God" (Mic. 6:8), must ultimately guide environmental policy.

Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition

I am in the middle of the Protestant chapter of Environmental Stewardship in the Judeo-Christian Tradition. This was published by the Acton Institute and contains four sections. The first section is The Cornwall Declaration on Environmental Stewardship. The next three sections are essays from Jewish, Catholic, and Protestant perspectives on environmental stewardship.

The Protestant section starts out with the Theological foundations of environmental stewardship. It then goes on to show the ethical reasons for stewardship. It is a well referenced essay with both biblical references, and 77 footnotes of research and publications.

This essay had six editors, four of whom are professors at colleges and seminaries. Just reading through quickly can be done, but I will want to go back and follow some of the biblical references, which is how I recommend other's read it, too.

(to be continued...)