So what is an ethic? An ethic is a set of moral principles or guidelines by which people ought to live. In other words an ethic is comprised of standards that people believe in, and set fourth for themselves that deal with right and wrong and have a duty or obligation attached. So what then is an environmental ethic you ask? An environmental ethic is a set of moral principles or guidelines by which people ought to live by in relationship to the environment. It's all about right and wrong ways to treat or use the environment, and our obligations and responsibilities to the environment. .
As the human race God gave us the responsibility to care for the Earth. In Genesis 1: 26 God says, "Let us make man in our image, in our likeness, and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, over the livestock, over all the earth, and over all the creatures that move along the ground." First I feel we need to define dominion. According to Merriam-Webster dominion is "supreme authority." When some people look at this passage, they say that, God gave us all this to rule over and do with what we please. But if you look closely and pick it apart you will see that God said we are created in His image to have dominion over it. And just as God is the supreme ruler over everything and is not an oppressive tyrant that enslaves and abuses all that he has power over, we should not be. God is a loving caring ruler, and so should we be. We need to love, cherish, and care for the environment in just the way God loves and cares for us.
Many people take the view that they owe the environment nothing because they don't use the environment and the environment does nothing for them. That simply is not true. Everything is tied together in a complex network. The food we eat, the clothes we wear, practically everything we use all come from the environment in some way. The food we eat is grown out of the ground.