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Newt Gingrich on Environment

Former Republican Representative (GA-6) and Speaker of the House


Replace EPA with new Environmental Solutions Agency

I don't think the EPA bureaucrats, who are dedicated to a Washington centered, top down, bureaucratic control by litigation and regulation, are going learn a new dance, a new approach, and a new model. This is double true because Obama wants to use EPA t control carbon, so he can control all of the non-health economy.

Now a new Environmental Solutions Agency, I believe, would do a better job of both protecting the environment and the economy. The principles are straightforward, localism when possible. I believe that incentives, innovators, and entrepreneurs will solve environmental problems, and improve the environment better than the bureaucrats, regulators and litigators.

The new Environmental Solutions Agency should see communities, states, and industries as partners, not adversaries in solving problems when one approaches. The Environmental Solutions Agency should look for new science, new technologies, and new approaches to get more energy, more jobs, and a better environment simultaneously.

Source: Speech at 2011 Conservative Political Action Conference Feb 11, 2011

Katrina's collapse of New Orleans was avoidable

As much as any one things, it was the government's failure to respond to the catastrophe of Katrina that made me determined to launch American Solutions and to insist on a bipartisan national movement to get America back on track. Here are the unspoken--and apparently unspeakable--facts about the disaster in New Orleans.
Source: Real Change, by Newt Gingrich, p. 44-45 Dec 18, 2007

Boston's Big Dig was a classic pork barrel project

Compare success stories in saving time and money with one of the most disastrous public infrastructure projects in modern America" Boston's Big Dig.

The Big Dig highway project was the most expansive such project in U.S history. The initial price tag was $2.6 billion (in 1982 dollars), and it was supposed to be completed in seven years. From the start, it was plagued by leaks, falling debris, delays, and other problems linked to faulty construction. On July 10, 2006, a woman was killed by falling concrete in a connector tunnel. In 2008, the "Boston Globe" reported that the Big Dig's total cost would hit an astounding $22 billion and will not be paid off until 2038.

That sounds disastrous--and it is. The Big Dig was a classic pork barrel project, with weak oversight, no incentives for achievement, and no innovation in management. But that's the way government programs usually work. That's why we need real change for a smarter, more efficient government.

Source: Real Change, by Newt Gingrich, p.185-186 Dec 18, 2007

Reject apocalyptic warnings; they only lead to higher taxes

In addition to favoring science and innovation over red tape and litigation, we must reject an approach to the environment that relies on apocalyptic warnings.

In every instance the danger was apocalyptic, science and technology were major threats, and the free market was hazardous. Big government, big regulation, centralized bureaucratic controls, and higher taxes were the solution.

Former Vice President Al Gore wrote in his 1992 book "Earth in the Balance", "We have tilted so far toward individual rights and so far away from any sense of obligation that it is now difficult to muster an adequate defense of any rights vested in the community at large or the nation--much less rights properly vested in all humankind or in posterity."

The danger her is that private property rights & individual liberty could be taken away in favor of some collectivist & non-democratic elite's interpretation of what is needed. The level of power that this would give to international bureaucrats is almost beyond belief

Source: Real Change, by Newt Gingrich, p.197-198 Dec 18, 2007

Greatest enviro dangers are poverty & command bureaucracy

The greatest dangers to biodiversity on the planet today are poor people cutting down tropical forests for money and killing endangered species for meat. Wealthy people can afford to protect the forests and protect endangered species. The greatest areas of pollution and toxic wastes on the planet today are the byproducts of the Soviet Empire and a centralized command bureaucracy that was willing to kill the environment to reach production quotas.
Source: Gingrich Communications website, www.newt.org, “Issues” Sep 1, 2007

Combine healthy environment and a healthy economy

It is possible to have a healthy environment & a healthy economy. It is possible to build incentives for a cleaner future. It is possible to have biodiversity & wealthy human beings on the same planet. And it is possible to have free markets, scientific and technological advances, and an even more positive environmental outcome. There is every reason to be optimistic that if we develop smart environmental and biodiversity policies our children & grandchildren will experience an even more pleasant world.
Source: Gingrich Communications website, www.newt.org Dec 1, 2006

Early 1980s: co-sponsored Endangered Species Act

In the early 1980s, Gingrich took some positions that separated him from most of the right wing. He voted for the Alaska Lands Act. He cosponsored the Endangered Species Act, and the Clean Air Act. Most of his early supporters from the environmental movement long ago gave up on him, but among Republicans, he remains a bona fide conservationist. Newt argues that he has been true to his original beliefs, while the "greens" have moved in a radical direction, toward the taking of private property withou adequate compensation.

Gingrich made plain in a recent interview: "We're going to try to write [an Endangered Species Act] that's economically rational and that protects species. The problem now is that the environmental movement is dominated by lawyers and bureaucrats, and it's a front for anti-free-enterprisers who use protecting species as a device to stop development. The question is, do you spend $300 million to protect one species or do you spend that money to protect 30 species?"

Source: Newt!, by Dick Williams, p.102 Jun 1, 1995

Regulating 15 more contaminants under Clean Water Act.

Gingrich co-sponsored regulating 15 more contaminants under Clean Water Act

Amends the Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) to publish a proposed list of at least 15 contaminants that may occur in public water systems and that are not currently subject to EPA regulation. Provides for proposed lists of at least 12 additional contaminants every four years. (Current law requires EPA to regulate 25 contaminants every three years.) Bases the determination to regulate a contaminant on findings that:

  1. the contaminant is known to occur in public water systems;
  2. the contaminant occurs in concentrations which may have adverse health effects; and
  3. regulation of the contaminant presents an opportunity to reduce health risks.
Source: Safe Drinking Water Act Amendments (H.R.3392) 93-H3392 on Oct 27, 1993

Other candidates on Environment: Newt Gingrich on other issues:
Incoming Obama Administration:
Pres.Barack Obama
V.P.Joe Biden
State:Hillary Clinton
HHS:Tom Daschle
Staff:Rahm Emanuel
DOC:Judd Gregg
DHS:Janet Napolitano
DOC:Bill Richardson
DoD:Robert Gates
A.G.:Eric Holder
Treas.:Tim Geithner

Former Bush Administration:
Pres.George W. Bush
V.P.Dick Cheney
State:Colin Powell
State:Condi Rice
EPA:Christie Whitman

Former Clinton Administration:
Pres.Bill Clinton
HUD:Andrew Cuomo
V.P.Al Gore
Labor:Robert Reich
A.G.:Janet Reno
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Page last updated: May 28, 2011