Michelle Reilly 1

Notes: “Red Sky at Morning” James Gustave Speth

Part I: A World of Wounds

(13-22) The nature of Speth’s “New Reality”

 1. 20th century growth – benefits in health, education and standards of living, purchased
at a huge cost to the environment
 2. Human enterprise on a planetary scale
o nature no longer independent of human beings
 3. World economy’s forward momentum is large
o population and economic growth
 4. human society is in a radically new ethical position b/c it is now at the planetary
controls (19)
o “active management of the planet”
o “IPAT equation” sees environmental IMPACT as a product of the size of human
POPULATIONS, our AFFLUENCE and consumption patterns, and the
TECHNOLOGY we deploy to meet our perceived needs. (20)

2. Lost in Eden
(25-28) Why protect biodiversity?
 Biodiversity and Ecosystems
o Ecosystem change
o Ecosystems are the productive engines of the planet – communities of species
that interact w/ each other and w/ the physical setting they live in … we are
utterly dependent on ecosystems to sustain us. Ecosystems make the Earth
habitable: purifying air and water, maintaining biodiversity, decomposing and
recycling nutrients, and providing myriad other critical functions” (26)
o Best way to save biodiversity – convince people that healthy ecosystems provide
societies w/ a huge array of material benefits
o Neglect of environmental education
o Nutrient cycling
o 1. Our ethical responsibilities
o 2. Ecosystem services
o people have a fundamental emotional dependence on nature and living diversity
 value nature and living diversity b/c of the adaptive benefits it offered us
physically, emotionally and intellectually

(30-42) Threats to biodiversity and causes of deforestation

 Threats to Biodiversity and Ecosystems
o Land use conversion
 Agricultural lands, wetlands & forests  urban and suburban uses in
both industrial and developing countries
o Land degradation
o Freshwater shortages
o Watercourse modifications
o Invasive species
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Notes: “Red Sky at Morning” James Gustave Speth
o Overharvesting
o Climate change (effects of climate change on ecosystems)
o Ozone depletion
o Pollution
o Trade offs btwn high commodity production and impaired ecosystem services
 The Amazon
o Social and economic forces in Brazil: tax breaks & subsidies
o Uneconomical enterprises
o Illegal logging
 Drivers of Deterioration
o Clearing for agriculture
o Large populations of the poor
o Govt often encourages migrations or resettlements to relieve social tensions and
population pressures.
o Forests – heavy political and economic pressures
 Govts own ~80% of remaining intact forests in developing countries
o Bribes and corruption – “money power and politics”
o Well-intention but misguided policies
 Promote agricultural development & ranching in previously forested
areas w/ govt subsidies
o Expanding logging: encouraging high levels of foreign investment, weaker
domestic regulation in the face of international competition and loss of local
community controls
 Allocate responsibility for managing and protecting forests to the local
groups and communities that depend upon their healthy survival

3. Pollution and Climate Change in a Full World

(44-55) Changes in pollution (its nature & origins)
 From Modest to Huge Quantities
o Fossil fuels: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxide emissions & carbon dioxide
o World War II
 From Gross Insults to Microtoxicity
o Chemical & nuclear industries
 WW II – new chemicals & radioactive substances
 Synthetic organic chemical industry
 Pesticides
 Heavy metals
o Health effects
 From First World to Third World
o Industrial and energy growth have brought air pollutants to the developing
world
o Lack of sewage tx
 From Local Effects to Global Effects
o Greenhouse gases – atmospheric issues
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Notes: “Red Sky at Morning” James Gustave Speth
 Acid Rain
o Water pollution
o Crop damage, forest problems
 Loss of Protective Ozone
o UV-B radiation

(55-62) The likely impacts of climate change

 Global Climate Disruption and Energy Policy
o 1997 Kyoto Protocol
 by 2010 reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% below 1990 levels
 Bush Admin rejected
o Arctic – melting snow and ice
o Pushing the planet beyond anything experienced naturally for thousands of
years (60)
o US responsible for 30% greenhouse gases
o Extensive biodiversity loss; extreme weather events such as extraordinary
droughts, floods, heat waves, and hurricanes; abrupt regional cooling; sea-level
rise; coral bleaching; public health risks; and major new social stresses w/in and
btwn countries (61)

(62-73) Changes that would lessen climate change

 Fuel efficiency in transportation
 Heating and air condition needs
 1. Shift to natural gas (vs. coal or oil)
 2. Renewable energy sources – wind, solar thermal, photovoltaic cells, biomass,
hydropower
 3. Nuclear power
 carbon sequestration
 hydrogen-consuming fuel cells in cars
 Bush Admin 2003 – “Future-Gen” trying for clean coal
o America’s huge coal reserves
o Political power of coal states
 Regulate CO2 emissions from auto exhaust
 Congress – need to “cap and trade”
 DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN OIL
 “getting smart about oil”
o boost industrial energy efficiency
o raise car and truck fuel efficiency
o nurture renewable energy
o phase in fuel taxes
 An Addition to the Environmental Agenda
o Nitrogen
 Once fixed remains active for a very long time, cascading through the
biosphere
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Notes: “Red Sky at Morning” James Gustave Speth
 75% fertilizers 25% fossil fuel combustion
1. set the goal of ecosystem stabilization
2. search the entire production and consumption system (grain, livestock,
food distribution and diet) for opportunities to improve efficiency
3. implement cap-and-trade system for fixed nitrogen
4. expand research at the intersection of agriculture and ecology
5. focus on the food choices of the prosperous (72)

Part Two: … And the World Responds

(79-84) The characteristics of the first environmental era (the 1970s)

 4. First Attempt at Global Environmental Governance
o US first (Canada & Japan)
o Local issues
 Air and water pollution, strip mining, highway construction, noise
pollution, damns and stream channelization, clear-cutting, hazardous
waste dumps, nuclear power plants, exposure to toxic chemical, oil spills,
suburban sprawl
o Grew strength throughout 60s
 National Environmental Policy Act in Dec 69
o Early 70s
 EPA & Council on Environmental Quality
 Major federal legislation
 Lawsuits from environmental advocacy organizations
 New groups formed
o Resistance from industry
How:
1. Rising demand fro environmental amenity in increasingly affluent postwar population
a. Suburbia
b. National park visitation
2. Pollution and blight were blatant and obvious to all
3. Social and antiwar movement of the 1960s had given rise to a new questioning and
politically active generation
4. Widespread view that major corporations were getting away with murder
a. Silent Spring 1962
5. Industry was caught off guard
6. Precipitating events: Santa Barbara oil spill 69
Note:
 Current global-scale challenges were absent
 Scientists aided but did not drive Earth Day agenda
 Little need to define and promote “agenda” – ex Love Canal
o Realities of peoples experiences
 Mass publications in the 70s and reports from scientific groups
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(85-91) The characteristics of the new environmental era, their differences from the
first, efforts at amelioration
1. Depletion of the stratospheric ozone layer
2. Climate change due to greenhouse gases
3. Loss of crop and grazing land due to desertification, erosion, conversion of land to
nonfarm uses
4. Depletion of the world’s tropical forests  loss of forest resources
5. Mass extinction of species from global loss of wildlife habitat & associated loss of
genetic resources
6. Rapid population growth, burgeoning third world cities, and ecological refugees
7. Mismanagement and shortages of freshwater resources
8. Overfishing, habitat destruction and pollution in marine environment
9. Threats to human health from organic chemicals
10. Acid rain & effects of complex mix of air pollutants on fisheries, forests and crops

 mid 1980s – global agenda

 weak political base – but attempting to fix with law

First Movement (1970s): Domestic New Movement: Global

acute, immediate, understandable by public
Bottom-up from actual impacts on people
Legislation before corporate opposition was
aroused
US led fight for national level action in 70s
Could be pinpointed to big corporations
Chronic, remote (from North), technically
complicated  difficult to understand &
relate to
Top-down at international level by science
Opposition was prepared to protect
corporate interests
US failed to give international leadership on
global agenda – typical resistant nation
Villain is ambiguous

 1992 – Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro

o United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

(101-102) Difficulties with the “problem-defined approach”

5. Anatomy of Failure
1. easy to adopt the problem defined approach b/c that was the approach used
domestically
2. defining the solution in terms of the publicly perceived problem, treat advocates
maximized the chance of ongoing public support
3. disaster if solutions had been defined more in terms of underlying drivers and forces
a. environmental community would have lost control of the process

 addressing symptoms, not problems

 too many individual problems  coordination problems, limits on participation
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(107-115) Troubles: economic growth, North v. South, equity, free market ideology,
cooking the data a la Bjorn Lomborg
 the environment v. the economy
o need cooperation of large multinational companies
o economic pressures  political decisions that undermine treaties
 North v. South
o Poorer countries feel new policies would undermine their industrial growth
potential
o EQUITY is a prerequisite for global agreement
 Environmental cooperation can only be possible through solutions that
are both equitable and ‘ecologically effective’
  major political challenges
o developing countries wont agree w/o increased development assistance
 US v. the World
o American exceptionalism + arrogance = America’s negative role
o “trade not aid”
 Bjorn Lomborg
o Keg w/ tap at the bottom – flowing steadily & nearing empty
o How humanity should govern itself in the face of uncertainty
 Do nothing b/c regulatory cures are generally worse than environmental
disease
o Political argument, not scientific description
 Misrepresents the scientific literature

Part 3: Facing Up to Underlying Causes

(120-139) Drivers of deterioration. Think about what they are and what effects they
have. List on page 120. Consider the connections among things: market failure &
consumption for example; or cultural values & technology. Environmental problems
rise out of “non-environmental” causes. It’s all related.

6. 10 Drivers of Environmental Deterioration

IPAT Drivers
1. Population
2. Affluence
3. Technology
4. Poverty
5. Market failure
a. (134) environmental resources are unprotected by the appropriate prices that
will constrain their use. A market system doesn’t allocate the use of these
resources properly
6. Policy and political failure
a. political failure perpetuates and magnifies market failure
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Notes: “Red Sky at Morning” James Gustave Speth
7. Scale and rate of economic growth
a. Economic thought didn’t adjust to the changed conditions it helped create 
(indirectly) massive, rapid ecological change
8. Nature of our economic system
a. Growth-at-all-costs imperative
9. Culture and its values
10. Forces loosed upon the world by the globalization of the economy

(141-147) Globalization brings problems – what are some of them. List on 145.
Managing globalization for human and environmental ends (147)

7. Globalization and the Environment

1. An expansion of environmentally destructive growth

2. Decrease in the ability of national govts to regulate and otherwise cope w/
environmental changes
3. Increase in corporate power and reach
4. Stimulation of particular sectors like transportation and energy that have largely
negative environmental side effects
5. Increased likelihood of economic crises
6. The commodification of resources such as water and the decline of traditional local
controls on resource use
7. The spatial separation of action and impact from responsibility
8. Further ascendancy of the growth imperative
9. The rapid spread of invasive species and the resulting biological homogenization

 (147) Globalization should hold great promise… it wont unless it is consciously

managed fro people and for the environment. If the world wishes to evolve toward an
international economy, it will need to develop an international polity equal to the
challenge of governing its newly global economy.

Part Four: The Transition to Sustainability

(152-147) Six transitions what they are and how they are related to global
environmental troubles. You have seen these arguments before. You need to
understand the basic ideas at their foundation. (Also see 237-256)

8. Attacking the Root Causes

1. A stable or smaller world population

2. Free of mass poverty
3. Environmentally benign technologies
a. Wind farm construction
b. Wind turbine manufacturing
c. Hydrogen generation
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d. Fuel cell manufacturing
e. Solar cell manufacturing
f. Light rail construction
4. Environmentally honest practices
5. Sustainable consumption
a. Increase consumer awareness and choice
b. Promote innovative policies
c. Accelerate demand for green products
d. Demand corporate accountability
e. Encourage sustainable business practices
6. Knowledge and learning

(172-190) Be able to discuss nongovernmental environmental initiatives

9. Taking “Good Governance” Seriously

 7th transition must take place in institutions and governance
 world business council for sustainable development
o FROG: first raise our growth
 Meet economic challenges first and worry about environment later
 Business-as-usual
o GEOpolity
 People turn to govts to focus the market on environmental and social
ends
 Rely heavily on intergovt institutions and treaties
 International envi law and global envi agreements
o JAZZ
 People and businesses create a world full of unscripted, voluntary
initiatives that are decentralized and improvisational, like jazz
 Info about business behavior is abundant
 Good conduct is enforced by public opinion and consumer decisions
 Govts facilitate not regulate
 Environmental and consumer groups are very active
 Businesses see strategic advantage in doing the right thing
 Basic international environmental law principles (175) – essentially the “Rio Principles”
o Fundamental human right
o Common concern
o Common but differentiated responsibilities
o Duty not to cause environmental harm
o Integration
o The polluter pays principle
o The precautionary principle
o Public participation
o Right to development
 Call for a World Environmental Organization (WEO)
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 Building a new GEOpolity involves giving the public access to the governance process,
including info needed for responsible participation
o Both national and international level
 Environmental organizations and NGOs

(191-201) Be able to discuss the most important transition

10. The Most Fundamental Transition of All

 TRANSITION IN CULTURE AND CONSCIOUSNESS
 Caring, nurturing, sustaining
 Protection for their own sake of the living communities that evolved here with us and
our trusteeship of the earth’s natural wealth and beauty for generations to come
 New sustainability – nonmaterial fulfillment
o Quality of life
o Quality of human solidarity
o Quality of earth
 The Earth Chapter – ethical principles needed to “bring forth a sustainable global
society founded on respect for nature, universal human rights, economic justice and
culture of peace.”
o Universal responsibility
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Review: [untitled] Author(s): J. B. Source: Population and Development Review, Vol. 31, No.
1 (Mar., 2005), pp. 182-183 Published by: Population Council Stable URL:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/3401453 .
Accessed: 19/04/2011 02:18

JAMES GUSTAVESPETH Red Sky at Morning:America and the Crisisof the Global
Environment New Haven, CT:YaleUniversityPress.2004. xv + 299 p. $22.80.
Rapid population growth and ever-expanding economies have resulted in envi-
ronmental problems ranging from the local (e.g., air and water pollution, soil ero-
sion, and deforestation) to the global (e.g., climate change, loss of biodiversity, and
over-fishing of oceans). Thisbook provides a brief summary of these environ- mental
challenges but it is mostly devoted to a review and discussion of national and
international responses, and to strategies to manage the transition to sustainability.
Since the 1960s an increasingly influential environmental move- ment has pushed
for the adoption of laws to addressvarious threats. In developed
ccountries these efforts have led to the largely successful implementation of legisla-
tion and the creation of regulatory agencies to reduce local pollution. As a result, the
quality of the air and water in these countries has generally improved in re- cent
decades. In contrast, international efforts to deal with global issues have been
largely unsuccessful; the main exception is the adoption of the Montreal Protocol
banning the use of ozone-depleting chemicals. This troubling failure to confront
many international environmental issues is attributed to several factors, including
the remote nature of global problems, disputed science, opposition from corporate
interests, and the lack of cooperation from the United States, which has been the
principal holdout on a number of international treaties, in particular the Kyoto
protocol to limit the production of greenhouse gasses. The book concludes with a call
to action on eight goals to bring about sustainability: stabilized world popula- tion,
reduced poverty, new environmentally benign technologies, environmen- tally
honest prices, sustainable consumption of natural resources, a better-edu- cated
public, improved institutions and governance, and changed values. The final chapter
provides web-based resources for readers who wish to act to implement these goals.
Overall this is a highly informative, thoughtful, and comprehensive overview of a
complex and controversial topic. The author's insights into the po- litical dimensions
of the ongoing struggle to develop and implement international environmental
agreements are particularlyvaluable.-J.B.

Udo E. Simonis
New seminal environmental works
Nine review articles

Red Sky at Morning. America and the Crisis of the Global Environment
By James Gustave Speth New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2004, XV + 275 pp.
ISBN 0-300-10232-1.
“Red sky at night, sailors delight; red sky at morning, sailors take warning” – is a saying
amongst sailors often borne out by experience. Gus Speth, the grand old man of American
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Notes: “Red Sky at Morning” James Gustave Speth
environmentalism, has written a shake-up book, a real danger signal. Actually, he is not that
old, but old enough to get angry again. And angry Speth is about the failures to protect the
global ecology, angry about the incompetence of the international community to prevent
biological impoverishment – sad about the US administration whose priorities have strayed
badly off the path. A little angry also on himself: ”My generation is a generation, I fear, of
great talkers, overly fond of conferences. On action, however, we have fallen far short” (p.
8).
In recent years, quite a few books and reports have been published on the state of the
global environment, and on global environmental governance. None, I think, is like Speth’s
book that combines qualities that seldom go together: extensive empirical evidence, razor-
sharp analysis, and personal engagement, compassion even.
The central hypothesis of the book is straightforward: It is about challeng- ing those who
may believe that the international negotiations, treaties and other agreements of the past
decades have prepared us to deal with global environmental threats; they haven’t: “The
current system of international4 New Seminal Environmental Works
efforts to help the environment simply isn’t working. The design makes sure it won’t work,
and the statistics keep getting worse. We need a new design, and to make that happen, civil
society must take the helm” (p. xii).
In four parts, Speth starts off to present such a new design by telling the story of how things
got the way they are now – and how we can change them.
Part I (pp. 11-73) is on how environmental challenges increasingly go global. He is
presenting “A World of Wounds”, sweeping and disturbing evidence on the two mega
trends of environmental degradation - industrial pollution and biological impoverishment -
that occur in an increasingly fuller world. For such crucial issues as deforestation, loss of
biodiversity, and climate change, he says, we have already run out of time. Speth is not
quoting the Meadows at this point, but he makes it very clear: here, we are already beyond
the limits. Instead, he is citing Dante’s notice at the en- trance of Hell: “Abandon all hope
you who enter” (p. 11) and some of the statistics he is presenting are indeed hellish. Yet
abandoning hope, he be- lieves, is precisely what we must not do: “However bad the
situation looks, remember: there are solutions” (p. xiii) – better solutions than the ones dis-
cussed and presented in the past.
Thus, part II of the book (pp. 75–116) is a really fine review of the first at- tempts at global
environmental governance. But no doubt, it is a review of an “Anatomy of Failure”. Given
the magnitude of the challenges, the re- sponses mounted by the international community
appear pitifully weak. Undoubtedly, international environmental affairs have become a
major sub- ject of scholarly inquiry and teaching, a large body of relevant scholarship now
exists – though only one environmental research was to win a Nobel prize so far (Rowland,
Molina, Crutzen).
Udo E. Simonis 5
It is interesting, Speth says, to contrast the environmental field with the economic one: The
phrase “managing the global economy” comes easily; but “managing the global
environment” still sounds strange somehow, fu- turistic even, although it should not: “The
global environment is more of an integrated system than the global economy; it is even
more fundamental to human well-being” (p. 78). The bottom line is that the treaties,
agreements, and protocols do not drive the changes that are needed: “The Climate Con-
vention is not protecting the climate, the Biodiversity Convention is not protecting
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biodiversity, the Desertification Convention is not preventing desertification, and even the
older and stronger Convention on the Law of the Sea is not protecting fisheries”. In this
manner, global environmental problems have gone from bad to worse: “Governments are
not yet prepared to deal with them, and, at present, many governments... lack the
leadership to get prepared” (p. 97).
Speth mainly blames his own country for the state of affairs: ”Following its leadership on
ozone depletion, the United States has typically been the principal holdout on international
environmental agreements” (p. 88). And, furthermore: “If there is one country that bears
most responsibility for the lack of progress on international environmental issues, it is the
United States” (p. 109).
It is well known that the Bush administration has rejected the Kyoto Proto- col, but the list
of important environmental agreements not ratified by the United States is much longer
(see p. 110). Speth quotes political philoso- pher Benjamin Barber on the reasons for this:
”The policies can be traced directly to that proud disdain for the public realm that is
common to all market fundamentalists, Republicans and Democrats alike... The United
States fails to see that the international treaties it won’t sign, the criminal
6 New Seminal Environmental Works
court it will not acknowledge, and the United Nations system it does not adequately
support are all efforts... at developing a new global contract to contain the chaos... The
ascendant market ideology claims to free us, but it actually robs us of the civic freedom by
which we control the social conse- quences of our private choices” (p. 111).
Part III of the book (pp. 117–147) is a major analysis of the underlying causes, the drivers
of global environmental impacts, among them the well- known IPAT drivers: population,
affluence and technology, and the forces loosed upon the world by the globalisation of the
economy.
In part IV (pp. 149–201), Speth presents his own solutions to the problems discussed. He
calls his vision the “eight-fold way” – mega trends or transi- tions we need for global
environmental protection and sustainable devel- opment (transitions 1 – 8): A stable or
smaller world population; free of mass poverty; environmentally benign technologies;
environmentally hon- est prices; sustainable consumption; ecological knowledge and
learning; good governance; and active citizenry, a transition towards culture and honest
environmental values.
This, in my mind, is the major part of the book, a genuine contribution, of- fering many
interesting and provoking ideas and suggestions – on FROG philosophy, GEOpolity, and
taking JAZZ to scale, on transitions that need to be debated and must take place in local,
national, and international insti- tutions to enable global environmental governance to
succeed.
This reviewer was especially pleased to find Gus Speth to be among the promoters of
transforming the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) into an effective World
Environment Organisation (WEO): “Hav- ing a well-funded World Environment
Organisation... would make a major difference” (p. 179), he says.
Udo E. Simonis 7
There is an interesting and imaginative addendum to the book, a part V so to speak, the
result of a collaboration with Kelly Levin and Heather Creech, entitled Resources for
Citizens (pp. 203 – 228), and structured according to Speth’s “eight-fold way” (the eight
major transitions). It is a documentation of US citizen actions (on organisations and Web-
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Notes: “Red Sky at Morning” James Gustave Speth
based resources) in areas where individuals have an impact on global environmental
challenges, i.e. in their role as voters, investors, consumers, activists, and educators. (Read-
ing this chapter on describing a multitude of citizen actions, readers will wonder how long
the present US administration can further negate global environmental governance issues).
The main message of the book in this way is further specified and becomes very concrete –
while the author’s anger becomes more conciliatory: Major changes are in order, changes
that must be driven by a sense of urgency. Effective global environmental governance
needs a fair legal basis and strong institutions, but it would not succeed without higher
environmental consciousness and an active citizenry.
Gus Speth’s book thus is alarming and visionary at the same time. It is an important and
authoritative book on a looming global disaster – and on how to avoid it. If books can
change the way we understand the future of our planet, this book will.