One of Newt's opinions
Green Conservatism: A New Way of Thinking About the Environment
by Newt Gingrich
10/30/2007
Do you remember back in the late 1980s and early 1990s when people began thinking differently about welfare?
Politicians in Washington and in state capitals actually woke up to the fact that the usual left-right screaming matches weren't doing any good. Lots of us came to understand that the welfare system we then had was actually harming many of the people it was supposed to be helping.
… ... moreThe result of this new way of thinking was welfare reform.
Eleven years later, the effects of this change are nothing less than transformational. Welfare rolls have declined by more than 60 percent. And a million and a half fewer children are living in poverty.
Today, I want to introduce you to a new way of thinking about the environment.
My Latest Book: A Contract with the Earth
This week marks the launch of my new book, A Contract with the Earth.
I wrote it with my friend Terry Maple, who was once the head of Zoo Atlanta and is now president and CEO of the Palm Beach Zoo and professor of conservation and behavior at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
If I had to boil down the message of A Contract with the Earth to just a couple sentences, I would say it's this:
The left doesn't have the last word on how we protect our environment -- and neither do the folks who say we should sit back and do nothing.
The fact is, according to polling done by my grassroots organization, American Solutions, 95 percent of Americans believe we have an obligation to be good stewards of God's creation for future generations. Eighty-two percent said they believe so "intensely."
Over the last 36 years, I have watched the pro-regulation, pro-litigation, pro-taxation and pro-centralized-government advocates become the definers of environmentalism.
The left would have us believe that to be an environmentalist you have to believe in catastrophic threats, dramatic increases in government power and economically draconian solutions. Such a big-government bureaucracy, trial-lawyer-litigation and excessive-regulation "environmentalism" does a poor job of protecting the environment while it erodes individual freedom, destroys jobs and weakens our country.
The time has come to propose a fundamentally different approach to a healthy environment and a healthy economy.
The time has come for the development of a mainstream environmentalism as an alternative to big bureaucracy and big litigation environmentalism. You could call it "green conservatism," but it's really the mainstream environmental approach that has worked so well in the United States. President Theodore Roosevelt epitomized this approach when he said, "The movement for the conservation of wild life and the larger movement for the conservation of all our natural resources are essentially democratic in spirit, purpose and method."
A Better Way to Protect God's Creation
A Contract with the Earth, which is available in both book and audio form, describes a different -- and better -- way to protect God's creation.
Take this quick quiz:
•Do you believe a healthy environment should be able to coexist with a healthy, growing economy?
•Do you believe investments in science and technology will generate solutions to most of our environmental problems?
•Do you believe incentives should be offered to encourage corporations to clean up the environment?
•Do you believe corporate and private philanthropy is essential to the success of a global and environmental movement?
If you answered "yes" to most of these questions, you're probably in the environmental mainstream. You may even be a green conservative.
I'll have a lot more to say about A Contract with the Earth and new ways of thinking about protecting our environment in the weeks and months ahead. For now, you can read more about green conservatism at ContractWithTheEarth.com.
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