Page - 34 - in Water, Energy, and Environment - A Primer

space (i.e., responsibility to others on thisworld). It also implies that we must think beyond our own species to that of all Creation. There is a Jewish midrash, a rabbinic teaching that fills in perceived ‘gaps’ in the Old Testament, that builds on this concept of co-partnership: ‘In the hourwhen theHolyone, blessedbeHe, created the firstman, He tookhimand let himpass before all the trees of theGardenofEden And said to him: ‘Seemyworks, how fine andexcellent they are! Nowall that I have created, for youhave I created. Thinkupon this anddonot corrupt anddesolateMyWorld, For if you corrupt it, there is noone to set it right after you.’ 4.3.2 Theanthropocentricworldview The anthropocentric worldview, the ‘dominance’ view, focuses on how mankind uses the fruits of Creation to meet its own needs. In a 1966 lecture to theAmericanAcademy ofArts and Sciences, subsequently published in 1967 in the journal Science (19), the historian Lynn White argued that that the Judeo– Christian heritage arising from the ‘dominion’ commandment is responsible for the current ecological crisis. One response has been a Jewish and Christian environmental movement that was in many ways motivated by the revival of back-to-the-land values in the 1960s and70s’. 4.3.3 Otherworldviews By the 1990s the debate on environmentalism had expanded to analysis of how nature is valued in other religions. Critical events were the series of ten conferences on Religion and Ecologyorganizedbetween1996 and1998by twoprofessors at Yale University, Mary Ellen Tucker and John Grim. Papers from the conferences, attended in total by about 2000 people, were thenpublished in a series of ten books, one for eachmajor world religion (20). What becomes clear is that all major religions preach mankind’s harmony with nature. What is all Water,Energy, andEnvironment–APrimer34