Wednesday, March 12, 2008

It’s About Freedom, Not Climatology


When Vaclav Klaus, who has just won reelection as President of the Czech Republic, states that he has comparative advantage over other speakers on the issue of Climate Change, he is trenchantly correct. Klaus lived under the last large central planning scheme – communism. He rejects the offer to live under the even more draconian central plan of our time – climate alarmism and environmentalism.

Klaus explained his déjà vu vantage point to over five hundred participants at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change assembled at Times Square New York City on March 2–4. Stressing his personally acquired wisdom, Klaus said, "Future dangers will not come from the same source [communism]. The ideology will be different. Its essence [environmentalism and climate alarmism] will, nevertheless, be identical – the attractive, pathetic, at first sight noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of common good, and the enormous self-confidence on the side of its proponents about their right to sacrifice the man and his freedom in order to make this idea a reality."

"What I see in Europe and the U.S.," Klaus cautioned, "is a powerful combination of irresponsibility, of wishful thinking, of implicit believing in some form of Malthusianism, of a cynical approach of those who are themselves sufficiently well-off, together with the strong belief in the possibility of changing the economic nature of things through a radical political project."

CONTINUES ...

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