MIDDLEBURY, Vt. - On Monday, April 21, at 7:30 p.m., Dean of Yale School of Forestry and Environmental Studies James Gustave Speth will present the 2008 Scott Margolin ‘99 Lecture in Environmental Affairs titled “The Coming Transformation: America, Capitalism and the Environmental Future.” The lecture, which is free and open to the public, will take place in Room 216 of McCardell Bicentennial Hall, located on Bicentennial Way off College Street (Route 125).

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); “Global Environmental Governance” (2006); and “Worlds Apart: Globalization and the Environment” (2003). His most recent book, published in March 2008, is “The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability.”

He is a 2007 Middlebury College honorary degree recipient and a parent of a 1991 graduate. “Gus Speth is one of the foremost environmental leaders in the country,” said Middlebury College Professor of Political Science and Environmental Studies and Director of the Program in Environmental Studies Chris McGrory Klyza. “He has been central to environmental policy making in the U.S. and the world since 1970.”

Named in memory of Scott Margolin of the Middlebury College Class of 1999, the lecture is co-sponsored by the Office of Environmental Affairs and the Program in Environmental Studies. 

For more information, contact Janet Wiseman in the Middlebury College Environmental Studies Program office at 802-443-5710 or jwiseman@middlebury.edu.