Good questions, but

In Reply to: Re: Christian responses to environmental concerns posted by Skep on December 09, 2009 at 17:38:40:

Good questions, but I don't really understand the problem with what I wrote.

"Ecological problems facing the earth", are simply any and all problems facing the earth, be they isolated to the USA or India or cross-border or regional or global. And of course not all ecological problems are global in nature, but more often than not they are, or potentially will be if untended to. Often, what seems like a local problem has global implications (see examples below). And of course, India may not be responsible for what goes on in the USA or vice versa, but sometimes it actually is (also see below). And of course, Christians aren't the only demographic to respond poorly to ecological issues.

You wrote: "Perhaps the Bible-based teachings you mention in your argument is characteristic of a Christian segment found mostly in the Unites States but not of the whole Christian world."

The speech by the Sr. Programme Officer of the UNEP (posted somewhere below this post), was addressing not just USA Christians, but Christians in general, worldwide, because of prevalent survey and statistical data showing that Christians in general (Catholics, protestants, etc.) respond to ecological questions in a lackluster manner. You are right in that satistics also show that US fundamentalists in particular are not that concerned about taking any action re. the ecology. But this is still generally true of Christians in Africa, India or the USA. It is due to an anthropocentric worldview--the world serves man.

According to the report Role of Sociocultural and Environmental Factors in the Cause of Scabies published in March 2008, statistics show that Christian populations in India tend to spread diseases such as impetigo and scabies, due to poor living conditions, which are direct a result of sociocultural habits related to lack of respect for nature and the belief there is no need for harmonizing with it. (Of course one could just as easily produce studies showing certain diseases are spread in other demographics and link them to sociocultural factors; one could then blame it on their being Hindu or Muslim, etc. But what was interesting for me was the identified parameter: lack of respect for nature.)

Bad agricultural policies in the USA (or the West) can affect India, because Western interests have sometimes succeeded in persuading India (or other underdeveloped nations) to adopt pracices borne out of utter disrespect for nature:

• DDT was banned in the USA in 1972, but US-based Monsanto, producer of DDT, continued to sell DDT in third world countries like India. There are many chemicals such as dioxins, which are banned in the West but sold freely to developing nations.
• Nestlé is said to be responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths in India due to unethical promotion of infant formula. Doctors were given incentives to persuade mothers to feed their newborns formula over breastfeeding. The results were disastrous. (see )
• The USA and developed nations in the northern hemisphere hacked away most of their own primary forest during the Industrial Revolution, and now the world has to rely on the rain forests in South America and SE-Asia to stay around for everyone's sake. There is a lot of international tension, as developed nations put pessure on developing nations not to add to the problem of climate change.
• One with a happy ending: In the 80s, American farming and research companies took various strains of rice from Thailand, and through gene-splicing technology and cross breeding developed a new disease-resistant drought-tolerant plant. Then instead of thanking Thailand for their contributions, they offered to sell the new product back to Thai farmers. The Thai government realized that farmers would have had to keep buying the seeds from the USA (they were engineered not to regenerate), that the new plant would quickly replace all other rice plants, and that their biodiversity would have be destroyed. They wisely declined, and banned the hybrid rice plant from Thai soil.