Our previous piece on what the Bible says about mining brought this comment from Ian Hore-Lacy:
A fuller and more recent approach to this issue than the paper you link to is in my 2006 book Responsible Dominion. There has been a lot Christian writing on environmental care in the last fifteeen years, but there is almost nothing about a Christian approach to resources, including minerals and energy (also land use issues and more.) I have sought to rectify that on basis of 33 years experience in the minerals industry.
Here is a description of the book from the Amazon.com link:
Many Christian books on environmental care and awareness have been published in recent years but few, if any, grapple effectively with today’s sustainable development agenda, which is increasingly focused on finding creative ways to balance environmental conservation with humanitarian concerns. Responsible Dominion approaches sustainable development from a Christian perspective, arguing that some Christian environmental writings are deeply flawed in that they do not take seriously enough the biblical emphasis on the value of human life. Ian Hore-Lacy argues that there is an appropriate use of God’s creation to meet the needs of people, and then proceeds to explore what is practical and sustainable, especially in relation to land use, food production, minerals and energy. The book contends that modern secular environmentalism is deficient, with hidden agendas inimical to human values. In contrast, Christian stewardship should involve attention to the human economy as well as the natural ecology. Science and technology bring these aspects together and provide the tools for Christians to virtuously apply their lives to meeting people’s needs by focusing on the utilitarian aspects of creation without losing sight of the real needs of human beings or the need to care for God’s creation.
I have ordered the book, but make bold to bring it to your attention immediately, in the hopes that by the time I have read it, you will have read it and we can argue (in the Platonic sense.) At this link is a detailed piece from Ian on his book. I thanks him for sending it to me so I can post it for ready access.
Meanwhile I will do what I have been planning to do for a while: go and read the new EduMine course Sustainable Outcomes through Sustainable Relationships. And revise what I wrote about Mining Ethics. Finally I must thank Ian Hore-Lacy for bringing this book to our attention and ask him to provide us with a fuller perspective in more writings that we may post on this site.
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March 4, 2007 at 10:42 am
Ian Hore-Lacy
Just to amplify the above a little:
The substance of the book looks at what is practical and sustainable in relation to land use, agriculture, forestry, minerals and energy.
It makes the case that Christian stewardship of God’s creation should involve attending to the human economy as well as natural ecology, to engineering as much as environment, to expanding the supply of minerals and energy as much as conservation and recycling. It effectively rejects the notion of Christian stewardship of the environment, if (and only if) that abstraction is considered in isolation from the whole of God’s creation.
Christians are in danger of being coopted to agendas which are churlish, implying that God has been less than bountiful in endowing the world with a super abundance of resources. But we do need to get our act together in mediating these resources to the needy majority of his people on Earth, since we in the west are custodians of the main technology needed.
Part of the reason that we don’t is that we have all been conned for a long time by the Limits to Growth fallacy of the 1970s, by the notion that land and biodiversity is best protected by locking up large areas in national parks, by patronising attitudes to third world development projects, and so on.
Activist campaigns on environmental issues often lose sight of human need and then drive the political process in wasteful or even counterproductive directions, through sustained misinformation. Nuclear power is a case in point. GM foods and forest management are others. Junk science displaces proper consideration and regulation, which are bypassed by appeal to public outrage.