Having spent many years in the institutional church, working with a Christian organization and being around people of faith, I rarely - if ever - heard people make the connection between human rebellion (sin) and the environment. And in our post-modern, urban, industrialized context, most of us don't have a relationship with the land. At a creation care conference that I recently attended, I thought of 2 Chronicles 7:14, a verse that I had memorized nearly 10 years ago:
"if my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then will I hear from heaven and will forgive their sins and will heal their land."
I'm no theologian. But here's what I make of the verse, and it's context. In verse 13 God talks about the result of people's deliberate turning away from him: natural disasters of no rain, locusts and plague. The correlation isn't necessarily intuitive but it's there somehow - that human sin brings degradation on the earth. Our focus shifts away from God and toward our selfish ambition, which often means gaining at the expense of other people and the environment. And how beautiful that as a result of humble praying and seeking God in conjunction with turning away from our destructive ways the land will be healed.
Obviously that's my very simplistic interpretation and there is much to unpack and discuss, but there's a bit of food for thought.