Clearly the US, along with other nations, must address the pressing issues of climate change and depressed economies. Doing so demands a new generation of well prepared individuals capable of meeting these challenges. Drawing on his decades of experience as a key player in the global environmental movement and as a developer of human capital, Ringo argues that the United States must become a leader in the development of new technologies. That, in turn, will require higher education to redouble its efforts in the areas of research, development, and implementation of green innovations. Students will need specialized training, but the skills and dispositions associated with liberal arts and general education will also matter: skills such as critical and ethical reasoning, problem solving, and teamwork, along with a sense of citizenship and stewardship. Only in this way can our students become thoughtful and contributing members of a national and international environmental community.

As president of the Apollo Alliance, Jerome Ringo represents more than 17 million people across the country and has been endorsed by the AFL-CIO and 22 international labor unions. The Apollo Alliance is a broad coalition of major national environmental organizations, more than 50 businesses, and more than 100 organizations in the nation's states and cities. The Alliance's goals are to reduce the nation's carbon footprint, decrease our dependency on foreign fuels, and create good American-made jobs. Ringo came to the Apollo Alliance in 2005 as a champion of environmental justice and advocate of clean energy. Working for more than 20 years in Louisiana's petrochemical industry, he observed the negative impacts of the industry's pollution on local communities - primarily poor, minority communities -- and began organizing local environmental justice groups. In 1996 Ringo was elected to the National Wildlife Federation board of directors, and in 2005 he became the chair of the board -- the first African-American to head a major conservation organization. In 1998, Ringo was the United States' only black delegate in Kyoto, and in 1999 he represented the National Wildlife Federation at the United Nations' conference on sustainable development. He has delivered keynote addresses at the Montreal Climate Summit in 2006, the United Nations African Climate Conference in Nairobi in 2006, the Kyoto Plus Conference in Berlin in 2007, and the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver. In 2006 Ringo was a McCloskey Fellow and Associate Research Scholar at Yale University, and in 2008 he was a visiting lecturer at the Bren School of the Environment at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is the co-author of Diversity and the Future of the U.S. Environmental Movement (published in 2007) and The Green Festival Reader (2008). He also appeared in the Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.

Email: jringo900 [at] aol [dot] com