Roger S. Gottlieb, a philosophy professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and author of This Sacred Earth: Religion, Nature, Environment, is a very angry man. He sees his rage against ecocide (toxic waste dumps, oil spills, air quality problems, global warming, and the loss of biodiversity) as an act of moral courage or, as he calls it, spiritual resistance. The extent of the environmental crisis is only matched by American culture's habits of denial and avoidance. Business as usual, according to Gottlieb, enables corporations to pursue profit, governments to develop military power, and ordinary citizens to seek a better lifestyle. "From these varying strategies for profit, power, pleasure, or simple survival come the ruin of the world." The author goes so far as to explore the parallels between Nazi genocide and the environmental crisis. As in the past, so in the present — we are all accomplices.
Gottlieb salutes various heroes of spiritual resistance including Dr. Martin Luther King, Lois Gibbs, Domingo Gonzalez, Chico Mendes, and others. "To resist is to act with the aim of lessening the collective injustice, oppression, and violence we face." Gottlieb's cultural critique is right on target, but his criticism of the moral purview of the Dalai Lama and Thich Nhat Hanh is unnecessarily harsh. One of the dangers of fierce spiritual outrage is getting carried away with judgmentalism.