What the modern environmental narrative gets wrong

One of the very first commands God gave to humanity was to be fruitful, multiply, fill the earth, and subdue it. This was a mandate of joy.

Somewhere along the timeline of modern history, we lost this celebratory spirit. We traded the joy of dominion for a paralyzing shame. The modern environmental narrative, dominant in our media and universities, no longer views humans as the gardeners of the earth but as its cancer.

This shift traces its roots back to a distinct anti-human ideology that gained political traction in the 1970s, particularly within the nascent green movements in Europe. There emerged a deep-seated belief that nature is pure only when devoid of human influence.

This neo-pagan reverence for nature, often coupled with a neo-Nazi-like disdain for industrial civilization, has metastasized into the global guilt trip we face today. You see it in the eyes of young people terrified to bring children into the world. You hear it in the policy halls where "degrowth" is whispered as a solution.

For the Christian, the current environmental self-loathing is a heresy against the creator’s intent. God’s design is not static. He did not create a museum piece to be observed from behind velvet ropes. He created a workshop. When we read Genesis, we see that the history of the world is geocentric only in the sense that it is anthropocentric — it revolves around the drama of mankind.

The Fall in Genesis 3 broke our relationship with God and cursed the ground, making our work difficult. But — and this is crucial—the Fall did not revoke the dominion mandate. We are still commanded to rule. The difference is that now we must wrestle with thorns and thistles. Yet the modern green movement asks us to surrender to the thorns.

Biblical stewardship is about managing the estate for the benefit of the owner (God) and the tenants (us). A steward who refuses to harvest the crop because he is afraid to disturb the field is not a good steward; he is the wicked and lazy servant of the parables.

The scientific reality: Malthus was wrong

If the theology of the modern green movement is bankrupt, its science is even worse.

In 1798, Thomas Robert Malthus posited that population growth would inevitably outstrip food production, leading to famine and collapse. This theory sat dormant until the 1960s and 70s — coinciding with that German ideological shift — when academics resurrected.

They told us we were a virus killing the host. They were wrong then. They are wrong now. The metrics tell a story not of collapse, but of a miraculous abundance that borders on the providential.

Since the 1960s, we have not seen the starvation of billions as predicted by bestsellers like The Population Bomb. Instead, global food production has skyrocketed. Between 1961 and 2020, while the alarmists were screaming about limits to growth, agricultural output increased nearly fourfold.

To be precise, production rose by approximately 300% to 390%. During this same period, the global population grew 2.6 times. Do the math. We are not just keeping pace; we are winning. Agricultural output per capita increased by 53%. That means for every new mouth entered the world, we produced more food than we did for the person born before them.

The true mark of a good steward is efficiency, and according to the USDA, the footprint required to feed the world has shrunk dramatically. The amount of cropland needed to produce $1,000 worth of crop commodities (like rice, corn, and wheat) has declined by a whopping 68%, from 1.9 hectares in 1961 to 0.6 hectares by 2020. The amount of irrigation water applied to obtain that same $1,000 of crop output dropped from 1.8 megaliters in the early 1990s to 1.1 megaliters in the 2016–2020 period. We are doing more with less.

None of these numbers — made possible through the use of fertilizers, the irrigation, the mechanized harvesting — happens without energy, specifically, dense, reliable, affordable energy. And the energy consumption tells a complementary story: Global primary energy consumption has increased by approximately 170% since the 1960s and a massive 2,930% since 1800.

This explosion in energy use coincides perfectly with unprecedented discovery and innovation in science and technology. It opened the doorway for incredible human success. The ultimate metric of this success is not GDP, but life itself.

In 1900, before the widespread adoption of fossil fuels and modern agriculture, the average life expectancy of a newborn was a tragic 32 years. By 2021, that number had more than doubled to 71 years. Think about what that means. We have gifted the average human being an entire second lifetime.

The garden is still here. It’s bigger now, global in scale, and it requires more work than ever. You have a choice: You can adopt the worldview that sees you as a planetary disease, a view with dark historical origins and a hopeless future. Or you can stand on the solid rock of Scripture and the undeniable evidence of history.

First, reject the false theology that equates human development with sin. Human work, human ingenuity, and human industry reflect the image of God within us.

Second, ground stewardship in abundance, not scarcity. The biblical mandate assumes a world of genuine resources that humans are called to develop and manage wisely.

And third, resist the moral intimidation that the guilt narratives deploy. When you hear that humanity is destroying the planet, consult the data.