It hardly needs saying that the environmental questions are among the most pressing and hotly debated of our time. The issues are, in an immediate sense, political and scientific, but one's stance on them also reflects basic philosophical and ethical commitments. For its annual lecture series of 2010–2011 the Royal Institute of Philosophy invited a number of distinguished philosophers and environmentalists from a wide range of backgrounds, to reflect on their concerns, and this books is based on their lectures.

I would like to thank all those who contributed to the lecture series and to this book, and also to Adam Ferner for his help with preparing the volume for publication and for the index.