DEUT1021 Thousands of years ago, before ecology became a worldwide human concern, Judaism dealt at length and in a most sophisticated manner with these specific dilemmas and other questions involving the environment. The first indication of any attitude to these issues occurs in the first chapter of the Torah [Genesis 1:28] where God commands man to "fill the world and capture it." In his commentary on this verse, Nachmanides explains that the world is given to men for their needs "to do as they wish" and includes, as one of the examples, man digging up the ground to mine copper. Since strip-mining of copper is a prime illustration of the destruction of the environment, it seems that the Torah permits man to use the world as he sees fit, with no ecological concerns or sensitivity. However, a few verses later [Genesis 2:15] the Torah tempers this by telling us that God put man in the Garden (symbolic of the entire world) “to work it and to guard it.”  Since guarding something means preserving it, God essentially wants man to both use the world of his needs, but, at the same time, to preserve the world and not destroy it. How can man do both? How can he use the world for his needs, but at the same time take care to save it? The answer comes from [this verse] in Deuteronomy. When an army at war surrounds a city in siege and it prepares to use a tree is a battering ram, a fruit-bearing tree may not be used for this purpose, only a tree that does not bear fruit. What is the difference? If one uses the food-bearing tree, then the fruit will be needlessly destroyed, since the same objective could be accomplished just as well with the tree that does not bear fruit. However, a person may cut down a fruit tree when it causes damage to other trees (Maimonides, Hilchot Melachim 6:8). This, then, highlights the Torah perspective on the environment. While man may use the world for his needs, he may never use any resource needlessly. Destroying anything in the world needlessly is called Bal Tashchit.