I had a hard time believing I was reading a book written by Newt Gingrich. It sounded like it might have been co-authored by Al Gore. Written late in President Bush's second term, but read as we're nearing the 2012 Presidential primary period, I sense that Newt has now seemed to have backed away from much of what was written in this book. As the GOP 2012 Presidential Primaries are beginning, it appears that Gingrich recognizes that the positions taken when he wrote this book probably won't fly with the more conservative wing of the Republican Party. Rep. Ron Paul of Texas, for one, in December, 2011, released an ad questioning Gingrich's "serial hypocrisy" and quoting newspaper articles, pundits and conservative talk radio host Rush Limbaugh to illustrate Gingrich's numerous policy changes. The Paul ad began with a commercial Gingrich shot with Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., in 2008 promoting bipartisan solutions to climate change. In December, 2011, Gingrich now says that making that ad "was probably the single dumbest thing" he's ever done. Yet in this book, Gingrich wrote that climate change is supported by a wealth of scientific data derived from a diversity of measurement techniques. Political posturing aside, Gingrich seemed sincere in his writing, so it's probable that during the Primaries, Newt is following the advice of political advisors and reaching out to the most conservative wing of the Party to try to win the nomination, and may back off positions contrary to those listed in his book should he win the nomination and then try adopt a more center to right of center position to appeal to more of the Independents. Aside from now wondering about Newt's change in feelings and original reason for writing the book, the other part of the book I didn't like was the endless platitudes vs. practical working solutions offered. Most of the ideas were things like "we all need to do better", " we need to respected the environment", "we need to foster better cooperation between government and the private sector", etc. But if you get through the somewhat superficial elements in the book, there are some decent ideas offered. I just no longer know whose ideas these are, and what direction Newt will take if he does get back into a position of political leadership.

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A Contract With the Earth is a book-length proposal for a new environmental policy. It wasn’t as science-oriented as Bjorn Lomborg's Cool It, nor as hyperbolic as Al Gore's Inconvenient Truth. It fell somewhere in between while trying to advocate civil discourse. E.O. Wilson's foreword added to the ecological credibility. The book wasn't bad, but simply much longer than needed. A Contract with the Earth could have been laid out just as convincingly in a magazine article.

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