James Gustave Speth is a fellow at Vermont Law School and a Distinguished Next System Fellow at the Democracy Collaborative, a nonpartisan public policy research and advocacy organization. A former dean of the Yale School of the Environment, he also co-founded the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), was founder and president of the World Resources Institute, and served as administrator of the United Nations Development Programme. He is the author of eight 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.