Phil and Stephen welcome presidential candidate and former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich to FFR to discuss how energy and space policy factor into our national dialog about the future.
Plus, we continue our discussion of Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler’s new book, Abundance: The Future Is Better Than Yout Think, which argues that we are much closer than most people think to solving some of the oldest and most intractable problems we have faced — including poverty, hunger, disease, and violence.
We explore the role that dematerialization plays in bringing those changes about. Dematerialization is a powerful force and maybe something of a double-edged sword. What challenges and risks do we face in making the move from a scarcity-based to an abudance-based world?
About Our Guest:
Newt Gingrich is a politician, author, and political consultant. He represented Georgia’s 6th congressional district as a Republican from 1979 until his resignation in 1999, and served as the 58th Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1995 to 1999. Gingrich is a candidate for the 2012 Republican Party presidential nomination.
In the 1970s, Gingrich taught history and geography at the University of West Georgia. During this period he ran twice (1974 and 1976) for the United States House of Representatives before winning in November 1978. He served as House Minority Whip from 1989 to 1995.
A co-author and architect of the “Contract with America”, Gingrich was a major leader in the Republican victory in the 1994 congressional election. In 1995, Time named him “Man of the Year” for “his role in ending the four-decades-long Democratic majority in the House”. While he was House speaker, the House enacted welfare reform, passed a capital gains tax cut in 1997, and in 1998 passed the first balanced budget since 1969. The poor showing by Republicans in the 1998 Congressional election and pressure from Republican colleagues caused Gingrich’s resignation from the speakership on November 5, 1998, and then the House on January 3, 1999.
Since leaving the House, Gingrich has remained active in public policy debates and worked as a political consultant. He founded and chaired several policy think tanks, including American Solutions for Winning the Future and the Center for Health Transformation. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He has written or co-authored 27 books.
(Source: Wikipedia)
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