If we pick up the climate-change science again, here are a couple of ways we might recontextualize the questions:
“What should be our society’s relationship with nature? What are the intellectual causes of the current environmental crisis? These ‘great questions’ of environmental studies are essentially humanistic inquiries into ethics and values.” —Jeanne Kay, “Human Dominion over Nature in the Hebrew Bible,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers.
In another context, it’s interesting to think about how Adam and Eve may have felt upon their expulsion from their rich orchard to labor on the land and to grow their own food:
Cursed is the ground because of you
in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life;
thorns and thistles it shall bring forth to you;
and you shall eat the plants of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread.
(Genesis 3: 17-19)
And from the New York Times (From “Climate Experts Tussle Over Details. Public Gets Whiplash.” 7/29/2008):
