Dominion or Exploitation?

I am long time Californian growing up along the Monterey coast. I grew up in symbiosis with the sea and its creatures. It is this realization that makes me worried about the future of our environment. The Gulf Coast is reeling under the recent oil spill and I, for one, am wondering what is our obligation in this. The most recent Time Magazine states that Americans share a portion of the blame for such a spill because of our “greed” for oil. On the other hand we live on the need for oil. Everything we use is based on petroleum products. Yet, how does this jive with the spiritual concerns of pollution and gluttony for more.
In Genesis 1:28 it reads, “Then God blessed them, and God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth.” It says we should “subdue” the earth. The imperative here translate we should “conquer” the earth as to enslave it. Yet, I don’t think this makes much sense in context of the passage. This is not to be adversarial given the passage right before it which states that we should be “fruitful and multiply” meaning we are to share with God the responsibility of creating and nurturing life on this planet. We serve as co-regents with God not only in creation but also in seeing to the welfare of all life including the fuels which we are given.
Therefore, the imperial imperative seems to indicate we are harness the earth’s potential and use what we can for our good. JS teaches that through the priesthood we are to have dominion, i.e., rule over the earth and to replenish it, meaning to give back the natural resources which we use. In the case of plant and animal it is not a problem, but with minerals it is a far greater problem.
Brigham Young comments on this further in a quote from Hugh Nibley

As Brigham Young explains it, while “subduing the earth” we must be about “multiplying those organisms of plants and animals God has designed shall dwell upon it,” 4 namely “all forms of life,” each to multiply in its sphere and element and have joy therein.”

If we fail to heed this admonition then we have a result the Earth pulling away from us. Again from H. Nibley.

Man’s dominion is a call to service, not a license to exterminate. It is precisely because men now prey upon each other and shed the blood and waste the flesh of other creatures without need that “the world lieth in sin” (D&C 49:19-21). Such, at least, is the teaching of the ancient Jews and of modern revelation…
One of the best-known teachings of the Jews is that when man (Israel in particular) falls away from God, all nature becomes his enemy. 47 Modern revelation confirms this: when all the people became wicked in Enoch’s day, “the earth trembled, and the mountains fled; . . . and the rivers of water were turned out of their course; and the roar of the lions was heard out of the wilderness” (Moses 7:13). Just so, in the last days “all the growing things will be blighted by the . . . great lawlessness, and plagues will come over all creatures of all the earth.” 48 Where people refuse the gospel, according to Brigham Young, “that land eventually . . . will become desolate, forlorn, and forsaken,” as nature refuses her bounties. 49

17 – 18The explanation of this all-out hostility is simple. “The animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms abide the law of their Creator; the whole earth and all things pertaining to it, except man, abide the law of their creation,” while “man, who is the offspring of the Gods, will not become subject to the most reasonable and self-exalting principles.” 50 With all things going in one direction, men, stubbornly going in the opposite direction, naturally find themselves in the position of one going the wrong way on the freeway during rush hour; the struggle to live becomes a fight against nature. Having made himself allergic to almost everything by the Fall, man is given the choice of changing his nature so that the animal and vegetable creation will cease to afflict and torment him, 51 or else of waging a truceless war of extermination against all that annoys him until he renders the earth completely uninhabitable. From Man’s Dominion, or Subduing the Earth
This article was printed as “Subduing the Earth” in Nibley on the Timely and the Timeless (Provo: BYU Religious Studies Center, 1978), 85-89; it also appeared as “Man’s Dominion,” New Era 2 (October 1972): 24-31, and New Era 11 (January-February 1981): 46-53.

In conclusion what options do we have left with our ever increasing need for fossil fuels? Nuclear? Wind? Water? A combination? Oil has ceased to be the answer to our needs.

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