Letters to the Editor
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Gift from God... Well, Yes.
But a gift that we are allowed to decide what to do with.
To answer "cosmic" as to why environmentalism is not a more natural position for Christians; I've found that they fall into 3 seperate groups of thought.
1: Yes, the earth and all its creatures is a gift from God. The caveat lies within this passage from Genesis: {1:28} "And God blessed them, andGod said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth."
Some Christians interpretation of this is that God gave the earth to man to do whatever he saw fit to do to it. If man sees fit (I'm not sure if we're supposed to have an election over this: Vote Prop 172!) to kill all the animals, plants, and raze the earth, well, that's his right because the earth is ours. Obviously not a great deal of PETA/Christian crossover, here.
2: The earth is a "worldly" plane of existence, much like our worldly vessels (our bodies), that really doesn't matter much other than we're forced to exist in it for the duration of our earthly lives (some even view earth as a kind of hell-unto-itself that the dead are lucky to be out of) but that the real life we should be concerned about is our heavenly (immortal) afterlife. Mostly because it will literally last forever!
In this interesting world view, loved ones are not looking down upon us from "on high" to see how we're doing. They could give a crap. The last time they cared about us was when they flipped us the bird as they entered the heavenly gates as if to say "So long suckers, I'm livin' the high-life now!". The end result is a very laissez-faire attitude towards earthly stewardship: why bother since it won't matter to me - I'll be friggin' dead. Sort of like Republicans and the deficit.
3: The sort of Christians written about in the excellent article. The only ones who can truly (as far as I'm concerned) call themselves Christians because they are truly Christ-like: concerned about the well-being of others, not thinking about the big M-E.
This is from a Baptist-turned-Catholic-turned-Secular-Humanist, so take it with a grain of salt...