Short-sighted of them. Those traditional Christian settlements live a lifestyle that doesn't destroy the environment.
“Those traditional Christian settlements live a lifestyle that doesn’t destroy the environment.”
There has been a raging argument about how much monasteries changed the lands they settled upon. Until just a handful of years ago it was assumed that many ancient and medieval monasteries caused massive changes in local environments by draining swamps and cutting forests for instance. I’m not saying the environment was “destroyed”. It was altered - often in significant ways that would now be illegal in many countries. At least this “major altering” of the local environment was the going theory until a few years ago. Now, after much more research it seems the “scholarly consensus” is that much of that is a myth for those monasteries had every reason to protect their isolation (i.e. not drain swamps) and every reason to protect sources of revenue (forests).
If you’re interested there are some books that talk about all this sort of thing:
John Aberth, An Environmental History of the Middle Ages: The Crucible of Nature, (2012).
Richard Hoffmann, An Environmental History of Medieval Europe, (2014).