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| A Contract with the Earth
ISBN: 9780801891656
Platform/Publisher: Project MUSE / Johns Hopkins University Press
Digital rights: Users: Unlimited; Printing: Chapters; Download: Chapters
Subjects: Environmental policy; Environmentalism; Environmental responsibility;
Efforts to cleanse the world's air and water and to put a brake on calamitous climate change aren't exclusive to "one political philosophy," Gingrich and Maple argue in this probusiness call for proenvironment action by politicians, corporations and individual Americans. Though the title echoes Gingrich's hard-right 1994 Contract with America, this more conciliatory contract reflects the former academic's penchant for bullet-point sloganeering, with its "ten commitments" call for politicians to abandon adversarial politics and for businessmen and conservationists to form "compatible partnerships." The authors alternately brand their approach mainstream and entrepreneurial environmentalism-mainstream because it rejects alarmist projections based on what they perceive as activist science and hysterical journalism, and entrepreneurial because they reject the notion that free enterprise and a cleaner world are opposing forces. The authors' concern about the future of the Earth is certainly sincere, but their prescription for action breaks shallow ground. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Newt Gingrich was born on June 17, 1943 in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. He was brought up in the transient household of a military family and survived the Hungarian Uprising as a boy. His Baptist faith also helped mold his conservative philosophies. He received a Bachelor's degree from Emory University and Master's and Doctorate in Modern European History from Tulane University. Before his election to Congress, he taught history and environmental studies at West Georgia College for eight years. First elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1970, he rose to the position of Speaker when the Republicans gained control of Congress in 1995. A staunch conservative, he gained nationwide recognition with the successful Contract with America, but his political career suffered a setback when his admission of violating House ethics rules resulted in a reprimand from the House and a fine of $300,000. He has written over 20 fiction and non-fiction books including Days of Infamy, To Try Men's Souls, Valley Forge, Window of Opportunity: A Blueprint for the Future, To Renew America, To Save America: Stopping Obama's Secular-Socialist Machine, and Trump's America: The Truth about Our Nation's Great Comeback. He was honored as Time magazine's Man of the Year in 1995. (Bowker Author Biography) |
