He served from 1977 to 1981 as a member and then for two years as chairman of the Council on Environmental Quality in the Executive Office of the President. As chair, he was a principal adviser on matters affecting the environment and had overall responsibility for developing and coordinating the President's environmental program. In 1981 and 1982, he was a professor of law at Georgetown University Law Center, teaching environmental and constitutional law. Many conservatives considered Speth to be a radical in regards to his approach to environnmetal laws.[2]
In 1991, Speth chaired a U.S. task force on international development and environmental security which produced the report Partnership for Sustainable Development: A New U.S. Agenda.
In 1990 he led the Western Hemisphere Dialogue on Environment and Development which produced the report Compact for a New World.
In 2014 Speth published his memoir Angels by the River. In that year, he was also board member of the New Economy Coalition.[7]
He currently serves on the advisory council of Represent.Us, a nonpartisan anti-corruption organization.[8] He is an ambassador of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance.[9]
Speth has led or participated in many task forces and committees aimed at combating 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.[10]
Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril (chapter), Nelson, Michael P. and Kathleen Dean Moore (eds.) Trinity University Press, (2010) ISBN9781595340665
Angels by the River, a memoir, Chelsea Green Publishing (2014)
Imagine a Joyful Economy, with Peter Denton, Wood Lake Publishing Inc. (2020) ISBN978-1-77343-161-1
They Knew: The US Federal Government's Fifty-Year Role in Causing the Climate Crisis, MIT Press (2021) ISBN9780262542982
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