But if, with Jews and Christians, your ‘faith’ is in a good creator God who has promised to set the world right at last, dealing with its corruption and decay and setting it free from all that to become even more gloriously what it already really is, then of course you will cherish and celebrate the natural world and care for it in all kinds of ways.

Put it like this (what follows is based on Romans 8.18-26, one of the central passages in one of the central Christian texts of all time). If I said, well, I find it difficult to struggle against sin – but one day God will save me and make me totally his, so why bother in the present? – if I said something like that, every pastor worth their salt would tell me that what God intends to do with me in the future must be anticipated, as best I can in the power of the Spirit, by me in the present.

Now, Paul declares that God will set the whole creation free from its slavery to corruption, and will do so under the glorious rule of his redeemed people. If we say ‘Well, that’ll be fine when it comes, but for the moment there’s no point bothering to do anything about it ourselves’, we stand rebuked in just the same way. You wouldn’t say of the person you love best in all the world, ‘Well, one day we’ll be married and I can be kind to him/her then, I needn’t bother for the moment.’ In the same way, to say ‘Well, God will do whatever he wants with this world eventually, but for the moment I can continue to pump carbon emissions and other harmful gases into its atmosphere,’ is simply illogical.

By the way, it is deeply shocking to us in the UK to discover that some American Christian leaders are being forbidden by their denominations to speak on this topic at all. The day when business interests dictate to the church what preachers may and may not discover in God’s word is the day when idolatry has taken over.