From John Frame in Christianity and Culture:

As they fill the world, they are to rule it. They are not to be terrified by the natural world, like Dorothy and her friends, who cried about the lions and tigers and bears. Nor are they to be fearful of electrical storms, or earthquakes, or desert heat. Rather, they are to march through the world as kings and queens, taking possession of everything. They are to harness the animals, the heat and cold, the electricity and seismic energy, to serve their own purposes. That means development. Adam and Eve are not to leave the world untouched, as some radical environmentalists would prefer. Rather, they are to use the resources of God’s creation, to bring out the potential of the heavens and the earth, to facilitate their rule under God. They are to turn the creation into a culture, into a home for human society.

Of course, use is one thing, exploitation something else. Adam’s family had to remember that they were made of dust. They were not God; they were finite, not infinite. To live, they needed to eat. So although God gave them the right to rule the earth, in one sense they were subordinate to the earth. They needed the earth for their food and shelter. That’s another difference between creation and culture. God creates the world, but does not depend on the world at all. The world depends entirely on him. But in human life, there is mutual dependence between ourselves and the world. The world depends on us to fill and rule it, but we depend on the world for our very existence.

So, just as God told Adam to “take care” of the Garden (Gen. 2:15), Adam’s family was to “take care” of the earth. God wanted them both to use and to preserve. To use, but not to use up. So God later told Israel to rest the land after six years of cultivation. Man is to rule the earth, but also to serve it. He is to be a servant-king. That is the basis of biblical environmentalism (pgs. 2-3).

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