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Letter: We are supposed to watch and tend the Earth

This July 10, 2008 file photo made with a fisheye lens shows ice floes in Baffin Bay above the Arctic Circle, seen from the Canadian Coast Guard icebreaker Louis S. St-Laurent. In the annual Arctic Report Card, released Tuesday, Dec. 15, 2015 by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, a record emerged for sea ice, which appears when Arctic Ocean water freezes. When its extent peaked for the year in February 2015, it was the lowest maximum coverage since records began in 1979. Scientists had previously announced that the minimum extent, reached in September 2015, was the fourth lowest on record. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jonathan Hayward)

Is the second coming of Jesus imminent? What do all these catastrophes mean? It may be convenient to disregard natural disasters as a sign from above, but it may not always be the case.

Don’t get me wrong, religion teaches us a lot of good things, like morals and life lessons, but there is one thing that it lacks teaching. While you can deny scientists and their fancy claims about “climate change,” you can’t deny people’s lives and livelihood which have been totally destroyed as a result from it. I know a go-to argument that is commonly used is: “Earth has always gone through periods of climate changes.” Let me clear up the confusion. No one is saying that Earth changing climates is unusual. It is the rate at which it is happening. What a coincidence that around the same time CO2 started appearing on Earth at an exponential rate, humans were in the height of their industrial revolution, e.g. factories and pollution.

The Bible tells us that God gave us dominion of this Earth to watch for and tend it. Have we done a mediocre job?

Nathan Damiento

Salt Lake City