OUR LIVING ENVIRONMENT IN THE 21st CENTURY
Today, the threat to our ecology is not minor but rather an urgent problem that threatens to kill our living environment. Scientists, researchers, philosophers, and ecologists are alarmed by the serious adverse impacts of human behavior. Politics united with greed has created a circumstance of imbalance.
Our modern consumer society works directly against balancing our over burdened planet. In the last 150 years we become industrialized and completely commercialized our lives. Government's selective regulations and laws, corporate merging, misapplied technology, and world markets and trade have created an excessive multimedia spectacle of advertising, franchise and conformity. To maximize profits often destruction, disease, starvation, deforestation, pollution of flora and fauna, rivers and oceans, release of technological wastes and greenhouse gases, and even war is made without concern about the negative impact.
These unnecessary demands and endless competitions lead to environmental degradation. The abuse of power and selfish misuse of natural resources originate from the uneducated mind of mankind. It is ironic that man is the one who pollutes his own world.
The Bible recommends conservation in Jeremiah 51:25: "I am against you, o destroying mountain, you who destroy the whole earth". The Quran speaks of preservation in 2:195 ". . and make not your own hands contribute to destruction . . . " and just as in the Bible and Buddhism, the Quran also encourages moderation and not to overindulge. (2:143, 7:31).