Our Environment
A variety of environmental problems now affect our entire world. Some of the largest are Acid Rain, Air Pollution, Global Warming, Hazardous Waste, Ozone Depletion, Smog, Water Pollution, and Rain Forest Destruction. Almost everyone around the world agrees that the increase in man-made greenhouse gas emissions is the primary cause, leading to climate change. Anything we can do is vital to the future of our environment, and of course, choosing green solutions is the easiest way to make a difference.
Religions and Environment
God's wisdom has ordained stewardship on the earth to human beings. Therefore, in addition to being part of the earth and part of the universe, man is also the executor of God's injunctions and commands. He is only a manager of the earth and not a proprietor, a beneficiary, or a disposer.
There is no denying the importance of plants and animals as living resources of enormous benefit, without which neither man nor other species could survive. God has not made any of His creatures worthless, every single form of life is the product of a special and intricate development by God, and each warrants special respect. As a living genetic resource, each species and variety is unique and irreplaceable. Once lost, it is lost forever.
Plants constitute the basic source of sustenance for animal and human life on earth, plants enrich the soil and protect it from erosion by wind and water. They conserve the water by detaining its runoff; they moderate the climate and produce the oxygen which we breathe. They are also of immense value as medicines, oils, perfumes, waxes, fibers, timber, and fuel. God has said :
"It is He Who produced gardens with and without trellises; and date-palms and crops with produce of all kinds; and olives and pomegranates of similar and different variety: eat of their fruit in their season but render the dues that are proper on the day that the harvest is gathered. And waste not by excess: for God does not love the wasteful." (Quran 6:141).
"Then let man consider his nourishment: that We pour down the rain in showers, and We split the earth in fragments, and therein make the grain to grow, and vines and herbs, and olives and palms, and gardens of dense foliage, and fruits and fodder - provision for you and your cattle." (Quran 80:24-32).
"And God created the great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the water brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth." (Genesis 1:21-22, KJV).
"But ask the beasts, and they will teach you; the birds of the sky, and they will tell you; or speak to the earth and it will teach you; the fish of the sea, they will inform you. Who among all these does not know that the hand of the Eternal has done this?" (Job 12:7-9).
