In conversation with host Steve Curwood, Natural Resources Defense Council co-founder Gus Speth reflects on the environmental movement both as a previous ‘insider’ and now as a reformer.
“I used to think that top environmental problems were biodiversity loss, ecosystem collapse and climate change. I thought that thirty years of good science could address these problems. I was wrong. The top environmental problems are selfishness, greed and apathy, and to deal with these we need a cultural and spiritual transformation. And we scientists don’t know how to do that.”

Steve Curwood is Executive Producer and Host of Living on Earth. Steve created the first pilot of Living on Earth in the Spring of 1990, and the show has run continuously since April, 1991. Today, Living on Earth with Steve Curwood is aired on more than 300 National Public Radio affiliates in the USA.

Gus Speth graduated summa cum laude from Yale University, served as a law clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Hugo L. Black, President Jimmy Carter’s Council on Environmental Quality Chairman, and advisor to President Bill Clinton regarding the U.S.’s role in natural resources, energy, and the environment.