Crossing the Next Bridge

James Gustave Speth, a pioneer of the modern environmental movement and dean of the Yale School of For­estry and Environmental Studies, has over the course of his career chaired the United Nations Development Program, cofounded and directed the World Resources Institute, served on President Carte's Council on Environmental Quality, and helped found NRDC in 1970, after finishing law school.

His latest book, The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing From Crisis to Sustainability, takes both a look back at this career and an expansive look forward at what remains to be accomplished.

Speth pulls no punches. He offers a sharp, sometimes lacerating critique of the movement he helped establish, saying it has become swamped under "environmental impact statements" and "total maxi­mum daily load" regulations. "Working only within the system will, in the end, not succeed when what is needed is transformative change to the system itself," he writes. His solution is to forge a new "envi­ronmental political movement," in which initiatives in human rights, social justice, politics, and the environment all work toward the same goal: a healthy planet that can fulfill the needs of all humanity.

In a vision he dubs the Great Transformation, Speth asserts that we must stop "worshipping at the altar" of economic growth. The drive to maximize gross domestic product spurs mass consumption and a heedless race for profits, which lead to a planet pillaged and burdened with trash. What's more, he says, such growth has diminished our sense of duty to the community by emphasizing the wrong values: individual rather than collective success, material rather than personal relation­ships. Speth argues that today's environmental groups, stocked as they are with brilliant lawyers and economists, would benefit by joining with preachers and psychologists, who could better shape an emotional message that urges the environmentally minded public to look beyond obvious green issues and to work toward fixing health care, strengthen­ing our sense of community, and creating jobs.

In making such an argument, Speth aligns himself with those who see environmental goals as indistinguishable from other politically progres­sive values. "The environmental community needs to become a political reform group." It's a call we're hearing with increasing frequency, but this time it comes from a uniquely authoritative voice.