Such a view confuses authority with autonomy, the idea being that ruling involves the total absence of accountability. In the Bible, however, authority involves not a lessening of accountability, but rather an increase. But suppose the servant says to himself, My master is taking a long time in coming, and he then begins to beat the menservants and maidservants and to eat and drink and get drunk. The master of that servant will come on a day when he does not expect him and at an hour he is not aware of. This is the antithesis of the modern idea that humans can take their fate into their own hands.
Nothing is preordained.
Thus, the charge to rule over the earth should be understood not as a license to pillage it, but a command to care for it in the way God would. Nor can we evade our responsibility by arguing that the Lord is coming soon anyway. Supremely, this means that we may have no god but God. Similarly, we must never allow environmental concerns per se to trump our compassion for our fellow humans. This runs afoul of the biocentrism advocated in many environmentalist circles.