A Religious Look at the Environment

With the Kyoto Protocol finally going into effect, many may ask, Why did the United States choose not to sign the treaty? The Action Institute has an interesting article looking at why the US is not a part of the Kyoto agreement and why that is a good thing.

The principle of stewardship and the related imperative that the goods of
the earth are intended for the good of all require that human beings treat
natural resources not merely as objects to be exploited for short-term pleasure,
but as gifts that are to be used responsibly, with a view to their preservation
for future generations.
The good intentions of Kyoto matched this imperative,
to conserve the planet’s resources so that our descendants were not saddled with
an environment irrevocably degraded. Where Kyoto failed was in projecting
blanket restrictions, without sufficient regard for the freedom of individual
nations—and individual persons—to express what might be differing evaluations
about the tradeoff between economic development and environmental
protection