Environmental Destruction is due to Egocentricity not Christianity

Human beings are slowly destroying the environment through exploiting natural resources, pollution, and overall lack of concern for beings unrelated to ourselves. We face a crisis that affects each and every one of us and will continue to grow in magnitude if no measures are taken to combat it. Various theories have been proposed attempting to describe why we as humans believe it is acceptable to do harm to our planet and to disregard the value of any non-human inhabitants.
Lynn White suggests that it is the Judeo-Christian belief that man's role is to control and dominate nature, which is primarily to blame for our contempt of nature. In Genesis, Adam and Eve are instructed to multiply, fill the earth, and conquer it” (Genesis 1) and he gives them dominion over all living things on earth. White claims that it is this instruction from the Bible that has led man to believe that he reigns supreme over all other beings. As a result of this feeling of superiority, man has exploited the earth for his own purposes without questioning whether or not he is doing more harm than good.
While this theory may have been true in Medieval times when religion dictated all parts of one’s life, it hardly seems relevant in our modern secular society, The United States is composed of three hundred million people from varied cultures, backgrounds, and belief systems. If the Judeo-Christian idea of domination of nature was truly the root of our current ecological crisis, there would likely have been a decrease over time in the amount of environmental destruction as our nation evolved from being centered on the church to a much more secular society. What we have seen instead is a continual and steady increase in the exploitation of resources.
The human race's egocentric nature and inability to recognize the impact its actions have on the future is more likely to blame for the environmental crisis than religion. A business owner cares more about making money than the affects that dumping toxic sludge from his factory into a stream will have on the water and the animals that inhabit it. Religion is not to blame for this selfish nature. We do not chop down trees because the Bible says we have the right to do so. We do so because it ultimately benefits us and unfortunately, we fail to care what implications it has for those generations that follow us.