Templeton prize winner

Holmes Rolston III is the recipient of this year's $1.1 million Templeton prize in religion. (I heard the announcement on NPR yesterday but wasn't in my car long enough to hear the story.) Rolston is an environmental ethicist. From the CSM article by Stacey Vanek Smith:

The earth, says Rolston, is the Promised Land of milk and honey referred to in the Bible, and man has a duty to protect it. He discussed this concept in his first article, "Is There an Ecological Ethic?" (1975). "We have a duty to preserve the whooping crane, and a duty to preserve the wolves," he says. "We have a duty to preserve endangered plants for what they are in themselves, because they are a part of God's creation."

In other environmental news this week, the Senate approved removing from the budget resolution revenues to be gained by drilling in Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. See also the Sierra Club press release.

[3/23/03 Edit: In the Opinion section of today's LA Times, John Balzar commented on these two stories in his piece "In a Dark Hour, a Place of Light."]