From the book “The Mission of God” (2016 [2014]) by Joseph Boot, p.249-251:
Much is said today about nature or land and ‘environmentalism,’ and Christians (usually the younger evangelicals), often with good intentions, can get caught up in the ‘save the planet’ rhetoric and agenda.
[. . .]
A truly biblical picture of creation stewardship does not elevate nature to the status of God as the source and wellspring of life, nor does it give nature or land priority over man, but rather tells us that the land suffers because of man; and because God governs all things by his personal agency, the created order responds to our moral conduct.
[. . .]
But because most people today (even Christians) think in impersonal terms about the creation and the land and view ecological processes in purely naturalistic terms, they do not think about man’s sin in relationship to the fruitfulness of farming, husbandry, forest health and animal populations.
[. . .]
Biblical creation care however, means obedience to God’s law as it concerns God, man and the land. This means that the environmentalists of today, who claim to love Mother Nature and therefore want to sav the planet whilst worshiping idols, advocating the killing of the unborn to reduce carbon footprints, pursue the theft and re-distribution of land and resources, seek a radical equalization of all things, viewing the wealthy, the church, the family and Christian marriage as the primary obstacle to planetary salvation, are in fact destroying the environment; the land, cursed on their account, will vomit them out. IF we are concerned with responsible care for creation and want to see human flourishing in the land and blessing on our agriculture, cattle, wilderness and animal kingdoms, we must obey God’s law. If we are parched in these areas, we need look no further than our sins. Obedience is green! Thus the Puritan mind actually takes the totality of the law seriously in these matters rather than arbitrarily picking bits from the Torah or prophets that might fit with a given ideology, then setting the rest aside as hopelessly outdated and inconvenient.
My own thoughts on this: I have long considered our fundamentally flawed and fraudulent monetary system to be the main if not root cause for many of society’s ills, including environmental degradation. In the latter case, another ungodly cause can be identified: The denial by the courts of property rights, which happened in the course of the 19th century. To accelerate industrialisation, people were denied the possibility to sue companies polluting their land. When this eventually lead to such great environmental degradation that it could no longer be ignored, the property rights were not re-instated, as they should have. Instead, governments declared that they would henceforth be the protectors of the environment. As if. Only when we do the biblical thing, which is to re-instate property rights and thereby fully re-instate individuals and their families as the true stewards of creation, responsible and answerable to God, will we receive a truly sustainable improvement of the state of nature.
By the way, the author, Joseph Boot, is affiliated with the Ezra Institute.