Environmental Degradation: Who’s to Blame and What Can Be Done? -- with Gus Speth

James Gustave Speth has had a distinguished career as a leader or founder of several major environmental institutions over more than three decades. A graduate of Yale College and Yale Law School and a Rhodes Scholar, Speth co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, chaired the President’s Council on Environmental Quality under President Jimmy Carter, was president and founder of the World Resources Institute, acted as a senior advisor to President-Elect William Clinton’s transition team, and oversaw the United Nations Development Program as its chief executive officer.  In 2002, he was awarded the prestigious Blue Planet Prize for “a lifetime of creative and visionary leadership in the search for science-based solutions to global environmental problems and for pioneering efforts to bring these issues, including global climate change, to broad international attention.”  He is the author of Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (2004), of Global Environmental Governance (2006), and of Worlds Apart: Globalization and the Environment (2003).