Food Fight! continues…James Gustav Speth, author America the Possible: A Manifesto for A New Economy

James Gustave Speth is a professor at Vermont Law School and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at Demos, a nonpartisan public policy research and advocacy organization. A former dean of the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies, he also co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council, was founder and president of the World Resources Institute, and served as administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. He is the author of six books, including the award-winning The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability and Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment.

America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part II

A more hopeful future lies ahead for America, if we have the determination and the will to build it.

America the Possible: A Manifesto, Part I
Where did the country go wrong, and how can we reclaim the things we love about America? Part one of two.

Change Everything Now
A paragon of mainstream environmentalism says it’s time to get a lot more radical.

Food Fight! series on Urban Connections is co-hosted by Maria Whitaker, Program Director, Local to Global Advocates for Justice, whose mission is…”to organize ourselves …locally and globally… from the bottom-up to build our collective strength to transform our power relationships with our global, big corporate, industrialized food, agriculture and socio-economic systems, in order to build truly healthy, just, fair and sustainable systems which provide livelihoods with dignity for farm and food workers and small and family farmers.”

“Poor diets kill more brothers than pistols.
We’re fighting for our lives like Michael Vic’s pit bulls.
Dog eat dog, America eats the young,
We die from beef, but more from meat than the gun.
Bullets for breakfast and mass murder meals.
Enemy of the state, and your plate is the battlefield
in this FOOD FIGHT!”
http://sosjuice.com/foodfight/

 

More biography of James Gustave (Gus) Speth

James Gustave “Gus” Speth joined the faculty at Vermont Law School in 2010. A Distinguished Senior Fellow with Demos, he completed his decade-long tenure in 2009 as dean of the Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies. From 1993 to 1999, he was administrator of the United Nations Development Programme and chair of the U.N. Development Group. Prior to his service at the U.N., he was founder and president of the World Resources Institute; professor of law at Georgetown University; chairman of the U.S. Council on Environmental Quality in the Carter administration; and senior attorney and co-founder of the Natural Resources Defense Council.

Throughout his career, Professor Speth has provided leadership and entrepreneurial initiatives to many task forces and committees whose roles have been to combat environmental degradation, including the President’s Task Force on Global Resources and Environment; the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment and Development; and the National Commission on the Environment. Among his awards are the National Wildlife Federation’s Resources Defense Award, the Natural Resources Council of America’s Barbara Swain Award of Honor, a 1997 Special Recognition Award from the Society for International Development, Lifetime Achievement Awards from the Environmental Law Institute and the League of Conservation Voters, and the Blue Planet Prize. He holds honorary degrees from Clark University, College of the Atlantic, Vermont Law School, Middlebury College, and the University of South Carolina. He is the author, co-author or editor of six books, including the award-winning “The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability” and “Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment.”

Professor Speth serves on the boards of the Natural Resources Defense Council, World Resources Institute, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, New Economics Institute, New Economy Network, 1Sky, and the Institute for Sustainable Communities. He graduated from Yale University in 1964 with a BA degree in political science, and earned an LLM degree in economics from Oxford University in 1966 and his JD degree from the Yale Law School in 1969.

Accomplishments & Activities

Awards, Honors & Grants

Honorary Doctor of Laws, University of Massachusetts Boston, Boston, MA, 2013
Honorary Doctor of Sustainability Science, Unity College, Unity, ME, 2013
Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, Green Mountain College, Poultney, VT. 2012
Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC. 2008
Honorary Doctor of Science, Middlebury College, Middlebury, VT. 2007
Honorary Doctor of Laws, Vermont Law School, South Royalton, VT. 2005
Honorary Master of Philosophy. College of the Atlantic. Bar Harbor, ME. 2001
Honorary Doctor of Laws. Clark University. Worcester, MA. 1995
Resource Defense Award. National Wildlife Federation. 1975
Global 500 Honor Role. UN Environment Programme. 1988
National Leadership Award. Keystone Center. 1991
Barbara Swain Award. National Resources Council of America. 1992
Keystone Center Creative Environmental Leadership Award, 1994
Special Recognition Award. Society for International Development. 1997
Special Leadership Award. Alliance for United Nations Sustainable Development Programs. 1998
Ordre National du Lion of Senegal. 1998
Lifetime Achievement Award. Environmental Law Institute. 1999
Blue Planet Prize, 2002
Global Environmental Award. International Association for Impact Assessment. 2005
Connecticut Book Award, Best Nonfiction Book, 2005 (for Red Sky at Morning)
Yale Anglers’ Journal Hall of Fame, 2006
DeVane Lecturer, Yale University, 2007
Hutchinson Medal, The Horticultural Society of Chicago, 2008
Lifetime Achievement Award, League of Conservation Voters, 2008
A “Best Book” of the Year, Washington Post Book World, 2008 (for The Bridge at the Edge of the World)
Yale Law School Association Award of Merit, 2010
Thomas Berry Great Work Award. Environmental Consortium of Colleges and Universities, 2013
Grand Cordon du Wissam Alaouite of Morocco. 1999
Straus Innovator Award, 2008
Publications

America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2012; paperback, 2013). Translated: German
Climate Change Law: Mitigation and Adaptation (St. Paul: Thomson Reuters, 2009) (with others)
The Coming Transformation: Values To Sustain Human and Natural Communities (Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies, 2009) (Ed. with Stephen Kellert)
The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2008; paperback, 2009). Translated: Japanese, Chinese, Arabic, Korean
Global Environmental Governance (Washington, D.C.: Island Press, 2006) (with Peter Haas)
Red Sky at Morning: America and the Crisis of the Global Environment (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2004). Translated: German, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Turkish. Paperback with new “Afterword” (2005)
Worlds Apart: Globalization and the Environment (Washington, DC: Island Press, 2003) (Ed)


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