Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril

Moral Ground brings together the testimony of over 80 visionaries — theologians and religious leaders, scientists, elected officials, business leaders, naturists, activists, and writers — to present a diverse and compelling call to honor our individual and collective moral responsibilities to our planet. In the face of environmental degradation and global climate change, scientific knowledge alone does not tell us what we ought to do. The missing premise of the argument and much-needed centerpiece in the debate to date has been the need for ethical values, moral guidance, and principled reasons for doing the right thing for our planet, its animals, its plants, and its people. This book encourages a newly discovered, or rediscovered, commitment to consensus about our ethical obligation to the future and why it’s wrong to wreck the world.

Contributors include: Fred W. Allendorf, Bartholomew I, Mary Catherine Bateson, Thomas Berry, Wendell Berry, Marcus J. Borg, J. Baird Callicott, Courtney S. Campbell, F. Stuart Chapin III, Robin Morris Collin, Michael M. Crow, Dalai Lama, Alison Hawthorne Deming, Brian Doyle, David James Duncan, Massoumeh Ebtekar, Jesse M. Fink, Dave Foreman, Thomas L. Friedman, James Garvey, Thich Nhat Hanh, Paul Hawken, Bernd Heinrich, Linda Hogan, bell hooks, Dale Jamieson, Derrick Jensen, John Paul II, Martin S. Kaplan, Angayuqaq Oscar Kawagley, Stephen R. Kellert, Robin W. Kimmerer, Barbara Kingsolver, Shepard Krech III, Ursula K. Le Guin, Hank Lentfer, Carly Lettero, Oren Lyons, Wangari Maathai, Sallie McFague, Bill McKibben, Katie McShane, Curt Meine, Ming Xu, N. Scott Momaday, Kathleen Dean Moore, Hylton Murray-Philipson, Gary Paul Nabhan, Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Michael P. Nelson, Barack Obama, Ernest Partridge, John Perry, Edwin P. Pister, Carl Pope, Robert Michael Pyle, David Quammen, Daniel Quinn, Kate Rawles, Tri Robinson, Libby Roderick, Holmes Rolston III, Deborah Bird Rose, Jonathan F. P. Rose, Carl Safina, Scott Russell Sanders, Lauret Savoy, Nirmal Selvamony, Ismail Serageldin, Peter Singer, Sulak Sivaraksa, Gary Snyder, James Gustave Speth, Brian Swimme, Bron Taylor, Paul B. Thompson, George Tinker, Joerg Chet Tremmel, Quincy Troupe, Mary Evelyn Tucker, José Galizia Tundisi, Brian Turner, Desmond Tutu, Steve Vanderheiden, John A. Vucetich, Kimberly A. Wade-Benzoni, Sheila Watt-Cloutier, Alan Weisman, Terry Tempest Williams, E. O. Wilson, and Xin Wei.

Kathleen Dean Moore, Distinguished Professor Emerita at Oregon State University, is a moral philosopher, activist, and award-winning author who writes about the moral urgency of climate action. Her most recent climate books are Great Tide Rising: Toward Clarity and Moral Courage in a Time of Planetary Change, Earth’s Wild Music: Celebrating and Defending the Songs of the Natural World, and Bearing Witness: The Human Rights Case Against Fracking and Climate Change, coedited with Thomas A. Kerns. 

A professor of of environmental ethics and philosophy, Michael P. Nelson holds the Ruth H. Spaniol Chair of Renewable Resources at Oregon State University and serves as the lead principal investigator for the HJ Andrews Experimental Forest Long-Term Ecological Research Program. He is a senior fellow with the Spring Creek Project for Ideas, Nature, and the Written Word and the philosopher in residence for the Isle Royale Wolf-Moose Project. He lives in Corvallis, Oregon.

Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu has received the Nobel Peace Prize, the Gandhi Peace Prize, the Albert Schweitzer Prize for Humanitarianism, and the U.S. Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 1986 he was elected archbishop of Cape Town, the highest position in the Anglican Church in South Africa. In 1995, after the end of apartheid and the election of Nelson Mandela, Tutu was appointed chair of South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He is currently chair of the Elders, an independent group of global leaders who offer their influence and experience to support peace building.