Stephen B. Chapman, associate professor of the Old Testament at Duke University Divinity School, says the Bible has a lot to say about man’s relationship to the eco-system.

“In the Bible there is an essential relationship between social justice and right worship and ecology,” said Chapman. “The Bible has an intense interest in ecology.”

Religious scholars are beginning to pay more attention to what the Bible has to say about man’s destruction of the environment and its relationship to natural catastrophes

“The land bearing the cost of global warming is new, but the connection between what humankind does and what societies they form and the health of the land and agriculture is as old as the Bible itself,” he said.