The environmental crisis besieges morality with unanswered questions and ethical dilemmas, requiring fresh examination of nature's value, animal rights, activism, and despair.

Roger S. Gottlieb is Professor of Philosophy at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Massachusetts, and the Nautilus Book Award winning author or editor of twenty books of ethics, political theory, religious studies, and contemporary spirituality. He is internationally known as a leading analyst of religious environmentalism and for his original accounts of spirituality in an age of environmental crisis and the role of religion in a democratic society.

Introduction; 1. Environmental crisis and moral life; 2. Why does nature matter? Paths to an environmental ethic; 3. The spirit of ecological democracy; 4. Can we talk? Understanding the 'other side' in the animal rights debates; 5. Where do we draw the line? Limits and virtues; 6. Guilt and responsibility; 7. Changing the world: a moral primer on environmental political activism; 8. Dilemmas of reason; 9. Despair; 10. Futures.