{"id":19857,"date":"2026-02-25T17:21:05","date_gmt":"2026-02-25T17:21:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=19857"},"modified":"2026-02-25T17:21:05","modified_gmt":"2026-02-25T17:21:05","slug":"what-the-modern-environmental-narrative-gets-wrong","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=19857","title":{"rendered":"What the modern environmental narrative gets wrong"},"content":{"rendered":"


By Vijay Jayaraj<\/span><\/span>, Op-ed Contributor Monday, February 23, 2026<\/span>iStock\/Deborah Harwood<\/span><\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

For the Christian, the current environmental self-loathing is a heresy against the creator\u2019s intent. God\u2019s 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 \u2014 it revolves around the drama of mankind.<\/p>\n

The Fall in Genesis 3 broke our relationship with God and cursed the ground, making our work difficult. But \u2014 and this is crucial\u2014the 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

The scientific reality: Malthus was wrong<\/strong><\/p>\n

If the theology of the modern green movement is bankrupt, its science is even worse.<\/p>\n

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 \u2014 coinciding with that German ideological shift \u2014 when academics resurrected.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Since the 1960s, we have not seen the starvation of billions as predicted by bestsellers like\u00a0The Population Bomb<\/em>. Instead,\u00a0global food production\u00a0has skyrocketed. Between 1961 and 2020, while the alarmists were screaming about limits to growth, agricultural output increased nearly fourfold.<\/p>\n

To be precise,\u00a0production rose\u00a0by approximately 300% to 390%. During this same period, the global population grew\u00a02.6 times. Do the math. We are not just keeping pace; we are winning. Agricultural output\u00a0per capita<\/em>\u00a0increased by 53%. That means for every new mouth entered the world, we produced\u00a0more<\/em>\u00a0food than we did for the person born before them.<\/p>\n

The true mark of a good steward is efficiency, and according to the USDA, the\u00a0footprint required\u00a0to 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.\u00a0The 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\u20132020 period. We are doing more with less.<\/p>\n

None of these numbers \u2014 made possible through the use of fertilizers, the irrigation, the mechanized harvesting \u2014 happens without energy, specifically, dense, reliable, affordable energy. And the\u00a0energy consumption tells a complementary story:\u00a0Global primary energy consumption has\u00a0increased\u00a0by approximately 170% since the 1960s and a massive 2,930% since 1800.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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\u00a0doubled to 71 years. Think about what that means. We have gifted the average human being an entire second lifetime.<\/p>\n

The garden is still here. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

First, reject the false theology that equates human development with sin.\u00a0Human work, human ingenuity, and human industry reflect the image of God within us.<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

And third, resist the moral intimidation that the guilt narratives deploy. When you hear that humanity is destroying the planet, consult the data.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Vijay Jayaraj\u00a0is Research Associate for Developing Countries with the\u00a0Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation. He holds a M.S. in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, postgraduate degree in Energy management from Robert Gordon University, both in the U.K., and a B.S. in engineering from Anna University, India. He served as a research assistant at University of British Columbia\u2019s Changing Oceans Research Unit in Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Vijay Jayaraj, Op-ed Contributor Monday, February 23, 2026iStock\/Deborah Harwood 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<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19858,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[6454,1107,2862,3840],"class_list":["post-19857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-christian-living","tag-environmental","tag-modern","tag-narrative","tag-wrong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19858"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}