Stewardship of a dying planet

With oil prices steadily climbing, rumors and claims of recessions, its more important to be wise stewards. There is renewed talk about carbon footprints, shrinking ice in the artic and other ominous news. What has taken years, decades to mess up, can't be undone in days and months. We as Christians should know that Jesus said their will be signs of the end, I'm not going to say that we're seeing those signs now, but we're closer today to His return than last year. So what's that got to do with stewardship? Some of the visual imagery of Revelation may be glimpses of a dying world, it only has to last until Jesus' return.

Lift up your eyes to the heavens,
look at the earth beneath;
the heavens will vanish like smoke,
the earth will wear out like a garment
and its inhabitants die like flies.
But my salvation will last forever,
my righteousness will never fail. Isaiah 51:6

This is dangerous ground to tread. We need to steward the earth so it will last another 10,000 years(creationists approximate age of the earth), to make it last, but some might say, use it up, Jesus will come sooner. If you do the math, the earth's about 10,000 years, does it need to last 10,000 more? Doubtful. 5,000? Unlikely.

What do we need to do as Bible following Christians?

Steward our resources, so that we can pass on the earth to the next generation to steward. The solution is the size of the problem. Its global macroeconomics. We need to get out of being consumers, use it and chuck it, buy new _____ all the time because its the latest and greatest. We instead need to reduce our consumption, reuse what we can, recycle what we can and compost the biodegradables, what's left will be a small of amount of refuse that could be sent out as trash. We need to be smart about trash, things that are in the trash stream on a larger scale than the individual household, can be recycled, reused, reduced, there are some very interesting waste to energy experiments going on right now.

What's our immediate benefit?

We can free up more resources for kingdom work, we can feel good about stewardship, we will have more free time, less wants and more contentment. We can spend time with our children, instead of working.