The 2015 Ruth Winter lecturer is Gus Speth, environmentalist, author, and former Dean of Forestry at Yale University. Titled “Environmental Renaissance: The Need for Something New,” his talk will discuss the imperative of a new global environmentalism.

Speth is the author of several books about the environment, including The Bridge at the Edge of the World: Capitalism, the Environment, and Crossing from Crisis to Sustainability and America the Possible: Manifesto for a New Economy, both from Yale University Press. His latest work, published in 2014, is a memoir titled Angels by the River, published by Chelsea Green Publishing.

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 Special Recognition Award from the Society for International Development, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Environmental Law Institute, and the Blue Planet Prize.

Speth has been a leader or participant in many task forces and committees aimed at combatting 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.

The Ruth Winter Lecture series is named in honor of the late Ruth Winter, a dynamic director of student activities at Lake Forest College for many years. During her tenure, Ms. Winter was instrumental in bringing many prominent speakers to the College, including Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Katherine Hepburn, and Dag Hammarskjold.

In the spirit of Ruth Winter, this annual lecture features a speaker who is politically, socially and culturally engaged in his or her community. In recent years, Winter lecturers have included author and hunger expert Roger Thurow, Inspector General for the City of Chicago Joe Ferguson ’82, and film director John Waters, among many others.

Recorded March 17, 2015 in Lily Reid Holt Chapel, Lake Forest College.