Theme: God will and has provided all that we need, there is no need for greed

“Why has strip mining usually turned the area where it has been used into desert?…What has brought about the ugly destruction of the environment? Ignorance certainly has a part to play but also greed. If the strip miners would take bulldozers and push back the topsoil, rip out the coal, then replace the topsoil, ten years after the coal was removed there would be a green field, and in fifty years a forest. But as it has usually been practiced, for an added profit above what is reasonable in regard to nature, man turns these areas into deserts and then cries out that the topsoil is gone, grass will not grow, and there is no way to grow trees for hundreds of years!

It is always true that if you treat the land properly, you have to make two choices. The first is in the area of economics. It costs more money, at least at first, to treat the land well. The second choice that is involved is that it usually takes longer to treat the land properly. These are the two factors that lead to the destruction of our environment: money and time — or to say it another way, greed and haste. The question is, or seems to be, are we going to have an immediate profit and an immediate saving of time, or are we going to do what we really should do as God’s children?” [Francis Schaeffer, Pollution and the Death of Man (1970)]