The Gardeners’ Dirty Hands

Drawing on examples of urban air pollution and soil pollution, this chapter describes our experience of common environmental challenges in terems of “the tragic,” suggesting that the governance of brownfields and of emissions from coal-fired electricity generation involves the need to give up, undermine, forego, or destroy one or more goods in order to possess or secure one or more other goods. Drawing upon the work of Dietrich Bonhoeffer and others, the chapter begins to frame such problems in light of Christian theology and ethics, and points to a new beginning for environmental politics in light of the symbol of the cross.