It does not take a great stretch of imagination to see the entire earth, at this time in history, as analogous to the Eden that humans were placed in, in the story of creation found in Genesis. Like that first Eve and Adam, we have the responsibility to "till the ground" (Gen. 2:6) and to "dress and keep it" (Gen. 2:15). And, like them, we have come to understand that we have "dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth" (Gen. 1:28). We are at a moment in history when these words can be appreciated as concise statements of things that are quite literally true.

We literally have power to shape the earth in nearly any way we choose--almost instantly in some cases, and over the course of generations, in others--including the leveling of mountains and the changing of the courses of rivers. We are very much like those first gardeners in Eden, finding ourselves with god-like powers (whether we want them or not) in relation to the surrounding creation. The question is, how are we handling, and going to continue to handle, this awesome responsibility?
 
By the time the biblical narrative progresses to the story of the flood, we have had a chance to learn more about the appetites and failures of those original gardeners and their descendants (us). We hear, again, a description of our "dominion" over creation--yet now with an ominous change in tone:
"And the fear of you and the dread of you shall be upon every beast of the earth, and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth, and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered." (Gen. 9:2)
"Fear" and "dread"? Is that what we now visit upon the rest of creation? One need not be theologically inclined to appreciate how appropriate this description is.

Again, we have power now to shape the earth in almost any way we choose. In ways that are both seen and unseen we are doing so right now. We are doing so at macro and micro levels, affecting terrain, biology, ecology, and chemistry. The question is whether we are willing to recognize this is the case, and how we respond to this awareness. In addition to the effects we have on the physical life and reality that surrounds us, we are also continually creating and nurturing human culture, which mirrors for us with painful accuracy the kind of "gardening" we have practiced there.

Despite the fact I have used biblical texts to illustrate the current situation, I do not feel compelled to point to judgment from heaven as the primary consequence of our neglect of our awesome role (which, theologically, can be described as a priestly role) towards creation. There is judgment enough in the fact that whatever world we create, we have to live in. This is not just a warning regarding the future, though it certainly includes that. In addition to the fact that we are now shaping the world of our children and grandchildren for countless generations to come, we ourselves live in the wake of those who have shaped the world before us. The way we handle life always comes back around, affecting others and ourselves. This happens all the time--is happening right now and in every nanosecond--in ways both known and unknown.

Neglect of others is ultimately also neglect of ourselves--because, no matter how hard we try, we cannot avoid being the recipient of our own actions. If we disregard and violate nature, we do not just break laws or spurn a high-flown ecological theory. We also inevitably disregard and violate something fundamental within our own being, since nature lives inside us as much as it lives outside us, and we ourselves are instances of nature too. The forgetting of this constitutes an aspect of our estrangement from our own life, as it appears in the world around us, in our neighbor, and in our selves. And, yes, it also contributes to the destruction of the planet, with the destruction of beauty at countless points along the way.