Biblical Stewardship vs. Environmentalism

There is a popular poster which quotes Chief Seattle as saying, “The earth is not made for man, man is made for the earth.” This nicely encapsulated the environmentalist philosophy. Unfortunately, it doesn't encapsulate much truth. According to the Bible, man is not made for the earth—the earth is made for man.

As we saw in part 1 of this series, popular environmentalism is a rival to Christianity. It is a false religion. The two world views begin with very different views of man: The environmentalist sees man as a servant of the earth (the creatures), while the Bible teaches that man is to serve the Creator and, in so doing, to rule over the creation. God's charge to mankind is to take dominion: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky, and over every living thing that moves on the earth” (Gen. 1:28). Of course, “multiply,” “fill,” “subdue,” and “rule over” are not words that mix well with environmentalism.

Contrary to the environmentalist view, the Bible teaches that man is not merely one part of nature, but rather the ruler of creation. He is the viceregent ruling over the earth on behalf of its ultimate owner, God. There is no equality. Man is above all other created things (see Ps. 8:4-8), and he is commanded by God to use creation to serve human needs: “Behold, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed; it shall be food for you” (Gen. 1:29) and “Every moving thing that is alive shall be food for you; I give all to you, as I gave the green plant”(Gen. 9:3). From the beginning it was God's design that men harness His creation to make it fruitful. The ultimate end of this work was to support human life and in so doing to facilitate multiplication of mankind that the earth may be populated for the glory of the Lord.

One of God's first acts after Adam's fall was to provide “garments of skin” to clothe the naked couple. This presumably involved the killing of animals. And in so doing God affirms His intended order: nature is to be used to serve man. Later, the Father revealed the great promise of a Savior to come—one who would lay down his life as an atoning sacrifice—by instituting a system that required the death and sacrifice of sheep and goats. It was good—in God's view—sacrificially to use animals to work out His redemptive plan for men.

Biblical Environmentalism

When men clear a forest or drain a swamp to provide for housing, business, or agriculture, they change their environment. Trees are uprooted and animals, insects, or fish are destroyed. Today in our culture, people question whether such destruction of natural life is morally legitimate. Some view it as a necessary evil. Others are convinced that it is wrong in principle for man to change his environment. They seek to slow or stop economic activity through a myriad of laws and regulations and they seem oblivious to the fact that their houses, food, and conveniences of life—even their very lives—are made possible only through the destruction of natural life.

According to the Biblical way of thinking, clearing a forest or draining a swamp actually improves the “environment.” How so? By making it more amenable to human life, and by both increasing the earth's capacity for human life and the capacity of men to glorify God. The houses built, the businesses established, and the food produced all increase the possibilities for the people to “be fruitful and multiply” as God commands.

What we call “economic development” is men taking dominion—ruling over the trees, fish and animal life in order to increase human welfare. Such human actions do not denigrate, but actually create a better environment. This is a significant point, and one that should not be lost on us. In the past few decades, the word environment, which means the “conditions surrounding one,” has come to be defined almost solely in relation to nature, i.e., the conditions surrounding a particular species or ecosystem. Most of us find it hard to think of the word in any other way. According to the Biblical way of thinking, however, the word environment should be defined in terms of the conditions surrounding man. An improvement in man's conditions and his capacity to glorify God is an improvement in the environment.

Within our ungodly culture this way of thinking is increasingly thought to be radical and offensive. To suggest that God commands men to use nature and to increase in population is seen as arrogant and exploitive. However, the Bible is clear: “the earth He [God] has given to the sons of men” (Ps. 115:16 and man is to “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth” (Gen.1:28). The earth is for human use. God is clearly “man-centered” in His view of creation.

Laws of Stewardship

But while God has given men great freedom in ruling over His creation, His laws also place definite limits on what men can do with it. What are the limits? To name a few: “the land” and work animals must be given a Sabbath rest (Lev. 25: Ex. 23:12), animals must be properly fed and cared for (Dt. 25:4), they must be treated with compassion (Lev. 22:28), their lives must be valued and not wasted (Prov. 12:10a), and care must be taken not to deplete their populations (Dt. 22:6-7). God is concerned about how His creation is treated; men do not have the right to abuse nature or pollute as they please. While man is a ruler over creation, he is also ruled by his Creator.

Many “Christian environmentalists” would be shocked to realize that the Bible says almost nothing about stewarding the environment per se. God's laws do, however, tell us much about how individual owners are to steward their animal life. In fact, the vast majority of Biblical laws concerning nature deal with the exercise of an individual's ownership of some aspect of nature. This is an important point. First, it establishes that God has made individual men the owners or governors of nature. Stewardship of nature is to be done on a private, or individual basis. Second, it also establishes that God, in His Word, has defined the limits on an individual's ownership rights. God has clearly spoken on how men are to treat His creation. Significantly, the Bible does not exhort us to take good care of “the environment,” but rather to good care of our property, our piece of nature.

Private Ownership

On a legal and social level, it is only the private ownership of property—which God's laws require and environmentalism is very much against—that encourages the good stewardship of creation. This runs contrary to the common wisdom. Since men are greedy and short-sighted, it is thought that their freedom must be limited by regulations and bureaucrats in order to protect the environment. Private ownership—and the freedom it allows people—is held responsible for degradation and pollution.

This popular view is correct in its diagnosis. It is true that fallen men tend to be selfish and short-sighted. However, it is precisely because of this sinful tendency that individual freedom and private property rights are necessary for good stewardship. Contrary to popular belief, it is only when men individually own property that they have incentive to steward it wisely. Private ownership is beneficial to all creation because of man's self-interest, not in spite of it.

Consider the hypothetical case of a number of sheepherders who commonly own some grazing land. (This was customary in England during the Middle Ages.) Because the property is not private but commonly owned, it is in the interest of each herder to seek his maximum benefit from the land. He can do so by increasing the number of his flock, thereby using more of the land. Each extra sheep will bring him extra profit while—and this is the salient point—the costs of grazing the extra sheep will not be paid solely by him but spread over all the sheepherders. Since he does not own the land, he has no economic incentive to consider the costs of overgrazing and permanently damaging the property when deciding about adding another sheep. Moreover, even If he did consider the common costs, he can't be sure that the other herders won't simply increase their flocks to take advantage of his not doing so. In other words, because the land is commonly owned, it is virtually “cost free” for him and thus he has an economic incentive to use as much land as he can. He has incentive to abuse the land since the benefits he will reap from so doing—at least in the short term—are relatively high compared to his small share of the costs.

This is what economists have come to call “the tragedy of the commons.” Under common ownership, the costs of a person's actions are divorced from the benefits of his actions and, as a result, the property is prone to abuse.

When property is privately controlled the tendency is different. Private ownership works to counteract the selfishness of human actions. When property is privately owned, both the costs and the benefits are borne by the individual owner. If he abuses the property, the cost of that abuse is paid by him and not by others. If he stewards his property well, the benefits accrue to him and not to others. To go back to our example of the sheep herder: If he personally owns the land and yet overgrazes, he has reduced the value of his property and his future income; but if he properly cares for the land, its value is maintained or increased and he will be wealthier as a result. The incentive for good stewardship is clear. The owner has a direct, personal, and long-term interest in his property.

Private Ownership and Nature

Contrary to the common wisdom, the abuse of nature is primarily the result of too little private property rather than too much. Why, for example, were the buffalo hunted nearly to the point of extinction while their relative the cow has always been plentiful? The economic answer is that the buffalo were commonly owned, while cattle were privately owned. The rancher of the 1800s didn't need hastily to slaughter his cattle because he knew that tomorrow when he got up, the cow would still be there. Because he owned (controlled) the cows, he took care to steward them wisely and preserve some of them for future use or sale. It was in his interests to maintain the long-term value of his property. The same man would tend to look at the buffalo differently. If he did not shoot it today, it would likely be gone tomorrow and somebody else would reap the benefit. Because he did not own it, he had no incentive to conserve the buffalo for his future needs of future sale. His interest was short-term.

Another, more modern example of the same thing: The Newfoundland codfish has been so over-fished that the Canadian government placed a moratorium on cod-fishing in 1992. During the same time that the “commons” cod stocks were dwindling, the population of another fish, this one privately owned, was dramatically increasing: during the 1980s the population of Mississippi catfish increased 500%!

As God's laws would lead us to expect, the private ownership of species is likely to preserve those species. In recent years some timber companies have begun fencing their land and charging a fee to hunters. The result has been increased game populations. Alligators are now being farmed as are elephants for their ivory and in both cases the population of the species is increasing. The same is true of forests, which according to many forestry experts are much better stewarded when privately owned. One conservationist has recently adopted the slogan, “Save the trees, sell the forests.”

Private property allows landowners to join together to protect species that are in jeopardy. As Richard Miniter writes in The Freeman:

North American bluebird populations rebounded thanks to the efforts of the North American Bluebird Society. The Nature Conservatory owns or manages more than 2 million acres of habitat. The National Audubon Society owns more than eighty bird sanctuaries. Ducks Unlimited, a non-profit organization founded by hunters and conservationists in 1935, buys and protects duck habitat throughout North America. Trout Unlimited, the Elk Foundation, and other groups perform similarly.

In short, humans are central to preserving and protecting wildlife. That's why privately owned species like chickens, cows, and horses—all of which were foreign to North America—outnumber publicly owned native species like bison, alligators, and passenger pigeons. No privately owned or managed species has ever been driven to extinction.

Policing Pollution

Yet many people (including Christians) think government regulations are necessary to protect people from the dark side of private property ownership. Evidently, one of the dark sides is pollution. Given opportunity and no restrictions on their property rights, men will pollute the environment. The only answer to the pollution problem, it is suggested, is less freedom and more government regulation. The regulators, it is hoped, will save us from the polluters.

Pollution is the result of one person (or group of persons) shifting the costs of his (or their) actions onto a neighbor. A simple example: at our last home, whenever I mowed the section of my lawn bordering my neighbor's driveway some of my grass blew onto his driveway. It was not my desire to blow grass on to his driveway (he really wasn't a bad guy); it was simply an unintended consequence of my “producing my product,” namely, a well-groomed lawn. While seeking to improve my condition, I interfered with his property and passed on some of the costs of my activity to him. I was a “grass polluter.”

A factory that spews pollution into the air is similar in principle. In making its product, the factory produces, among other things, the unintended consequence of air pollution. The costs of polluted air, like the grass on my neighbor's driveway, are shifted to people other than the producer. These unfortunate “pollutees” who live around the factory find their ability to enjoy their property interfered with. They must suffer the costs of the polluter's actions while receiving no direct gain. As long as he is allowed to continue, the factory owner profits at the expense of the surrounding owners who must breathe polluted air.

According to the Bible, passing on some of the costs of our actions to our neighbors is wrong. In fact, it is a form of theft, a violation of God's commandment, “You shall not steal.” When I leave my grass on my neighbor's driveway or pollute his air, I have stolen some of the value of his property. Whether I intended harm or not, I have caused physical invasion of his property and reduced his ability to enjoy what was rightfully his. But—and this is the obvious question—how should polluters be stopped?

Can Pollution be Regulated?

The consensus of our day is that pollution should be policed by regulation. As one U.S. Representative said recently, “Most government regulations are aimed at overseeing the permitted release of toxic chemicals into surrounding neighborhoods during a company's normal operations.” Regulators seek to manage pollution, not judge it.

The Soviet Union and its former satellite countries shared our faith in regulations. Under the communist system, almost no private property was recognized, and a vast body of environmental law and regulation was enacted to protect the environment. The state employed many bureaucrats to oversee this task. The result? According to one author. Eastern Europe is “the dirtiest, most degraded region on Earth.” Why? Because it was in the interests of the Soviet rulers to represent themselves (i.e., their short-term economic gain) rather than the interests of the people. When faced with a choice between political gain and a clean environment, the environment lost out every time. Russian lakes like Baikal, the largest freshwater lake in the world, have become horribly polluted through pulp mills located there by the government. The Aral Sea has, under communist rule, shrunk in size by nearly one third because its in-flowing rivers were diverted elsewhere for irrigation. Some areas have such extreme air pollution that children cannot be permitted outdoors during the winter.

Among academics, it is now widely acknowledged that nations which have generally respected private property have been the least polluted, and nations which have “socialized” property have been the most polluted. The communists did not fail environmentally because their regulators were stupid, but because they did not respect God's laws of private property. Under the Soviet system, like every regulatory system, there is incentive to get whatever economic gain can be had and pass the environmental costs on to other people or future generations. Rampant abuse is inevitable because there is no legal means for the property owner—the only one who really cares about his property—to defend himself against polluters. For example, as economist Peter Hill writes: “Farmers in Bulgaria were well aware that heavy metals carried in irrigation water were lowering crop yields and that the sources of the pollution were readily identifiable. However, with no property rights the farmers had no actionable claim against those causing the problem.”

The tragedy of the regulatory approach is one and the same as the tragedy of the commons. When a society opts to regulate polluters instead of allowing private owners legally to defend their property, it is substituting common or private ownership. Through regulation, the state replaces individuals and families and becomes the de facto owner. Since pollution does not mean direct and personal losses for the bureaucrat (as it would for the individual owner) the property will not be well-protected.

God's Law and Pollution

The Biblical case laws are God's gift of wisdom for civil rulers. These Old Testament laws, given in the form of legal situations or cases, explain God's standards of justice. They begin to flesh out the legal implications of the Ten Commandments and provide principles by which governments can plan public policy.

The case laws of Exodus 22:5-6 reveal God's will for dealing with our modern-day pollution problem:

If a man lets a field or vineyard be grazed bare and lets his animal loose so that it grazes in another man's field, he shall make restitution from the best of his own field and the best of his own vineyard. If a fire breaks out and spreads to thorn hushes, so that stacked grain or the standing grain or the field itself is consumed, he who started the fire shall surely make restitution.

Although we don't have a big problem with grazing animals or spreading fires in our society, the principle underlying these laws is tremendously important: people are to be held individually responsible for their actions and the consequences thereof. They cannot pass on the costs of “producing their product” (like raising livestock or using a fire) to others. If they do so, intentionally or unintentionally, they must make amends; they must render restitution to their victim. The Biblical view is that pollution (whether in the form of an animal grazing, a fire, or a smoking factory) is a crime—a legally punishable act. It is to be policed like all other crimes against people and property: the aggressor must restore the victim. I must clean up my grass, the factory owner must clean up his smokestacks. If we do not, the civil authority (God's ordained servant to deal with “those who practice evil”) must enforce a judgment against us and see to it that restitution is made to the affected parties. Pollution does not pay, under Biblical law.

The Modern View

Our modern attitude towards pollution is quite different in at least two ways. First, pollution is seen primarily as an offense perpetrated against—not a specific property owner—but society as a whole. Since the real victim is not an offended owner but society, restitution from the polluter goes to society (the civil government) and not the victim. Second, pollution is not to be policed primarily by punishing those who pollute (enforcing restitution to their victims), but by regulating everyone's economic freedom. Since people are regarded as incapable of handling freedom (i.e., practicing self-control), an army of bureaucrats is necessary to monitor and restrict anything people want to do that may cause pollution.

Modern man believes pollution can be solved by the rule of bureaucrats; the Bible teaches that pollution should be policed through the rule of law and the judgment of courts. The modern view sees the solution in restricting individual freedom and individual property rights; the Biblical view—as we saw in the last segment—upholds individual freedom and property rights. The modern view holds that polluters are to be regulated; the Biblical view is that they must restore their victims. The modern view sees pollution policy as a matter of expediency; the Bible declares it a matter of justice.

The Common Law Tradition

Our legal heritage in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain is known as the “common law” tradition. This legal tradition developed over many hundreds of years as English judges sought to apply principles of justice—often taken from God's word—in their legal decisions. The common law was, to a large extent, a body of legal principles based on the application of Biblical laws. With regard to pollution, as Jorge Amador writes, under the common law:

...a tanner who spewed noxious fumes throughout the neighborhood, for instance, could be taken to court by any of bis neighbors. Under the law of nuisance, the tanner was preventing bis neighbor from enjoying bis own property by spreading smells that sickened him or drove him away. He could be assessed damages and enjoined from further release of fumes.

The common law, like Biblical law, upheld individual property rights. Under the common law, a person's property included even the air over his piece of land. Interfering with his enjoyment of any part of his property was regarded as a legal nuisance which could be prosecuted through the courts. Individual property owners could police their own properties by confronting a polluter and if need be, taking him to court and seeking restitution.

In the last century and a half, we have strayed from our Biblical and common law heritage. A series of lawsuits in the 1830s and 1840s in the U.S., Canada, and Great Britain is indicative of a major change that took place in legal philosophy. Typically, these lawsuits involved a property owner seeking legal remedy for some invasion of his property—such as a woman seeking restitution from a factory that was spewing out smoke and soiling her laundry, or a farmer objecting to a train giving off sparks and burning his haystacks. In these cases, the courts took a new tack. While agreeing that property rights were being violated, the courts held that it was in the public interest to allow the polluting activities to continue without compensating their victims. The courts—eager to encourage economic growth—judged that for the sake of the public good, some “nuisances” should be legalized. In other words, justice and property rights were sacrificed to subsidize economic progress.

These legal decisions set important precedents. While private property rights were by no means eliminated, they were weakened. Polluters were granted a degree of legal immunity from prosecution by affected property owners, and as a result had less incentive to “clean up their act.” Consequently, industry was encouraged to develop along more pollution-intensive lines than it otherwise would have been.

Conclusion

All men are required by God's laws to steward creation wisely. But it is not enough to exhort men to “be good” and care about the environment, and nor can the environment be given long-term protection through a myriad of regulations. Private ownership, while no miracle cure, is God's mandated institution to motivate sinful men to steward His creation wisely. It encourages good stewardship by making “the environment” into “his environment” and tying a man's long-term success to the well-being of that which he stewards.

Modern pollution reflects the failure, not of a free-market system, but of political rulers who fail to protect private property and punish polluters. Under communist rulers, the “tragedy of the commons” reigned in full force since almost all property became commons. The result was environmental devastation. If our society continues to travel down the environmentalist road of diminishing private property rights, we will reap similar results. Long-term good stewardship of God's creation and the control of pollution can be found only through obedience to His laws of private property. Our single hope is in the regenerating power of the gospel of Jesus Christ. The gospel alone can change men's hearts and lead them to obey His laws.