One might think that the church would improve in light of recent environmental problems. Today, more than a billion people worldwide lack access to safe drinking water; entire species are being driven to oblivion at rates more than one hundred times faster than natural extinction; air pollution has produced record high childhood asthma rates in many U.S. cities; toxic levels of mercury appear in the fetal cord blood of one out of six newborns; and the treatment of animals in factory farms continues to challenge our civilized sensibilities.