Bush is Warming Whimp Next to Klaus

It is rare for a the president of a nation to write a guest column for a newspaper. It is even rarer for a president to openly challenge, in an international publication, the prevailing politically correct view of a controversial issue that appears to be dictating the policies and actions of many governments worldwide. Yet perhaps because an issue is in fact dictating in a manner that reminds Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus of another oppressive form of public thought control, communism, he chose to warn the world of the dangers of climate change hysteria. President Bush relishes his image as a “cowboy” president, a man who talks tough, talks straight, and never runs from a fight, but when it comes to confronting the increasingly alarmist radical political movement that surrounds “global warming,” President Bush is no match for President Klaus. While President Bush attends summits and pays verbal homage to man’s contributions to global warming, President Klaus adopted the true cowboy swagger and spoke his mind about climate change and the flawed science behind this hysterical phenomenon.

In a guest opinion column in the Financial Times last week, President Klaus offered the following view of global warming, quoted here in part:

We are living in strange times. One exceptionally warm winter is enough – irrespective of the fact that in the course of the 20th century the global temperature increased only by 0.6 per cent – for the environmentalists and their followers to suggest radical measures to do something about the weather, and to do it right now.

In the past year, Al Gore’s so-called “documentary” film was shown in cinemas worldwide, Britain’s – more or less Tony Blair’s – Stern report was published, the fourth report of the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change was put together and the Group of Eight summit announced ambitions to do something about the weather. Rational and freedom-loving people have to respond. The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced.

The author Michael Crichton stated it clearly: “the greatest challenge facing mankind is the challenge of distinguishing reality from fantasy, truth from propaganda”. I feel the same way, because global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem. It requires courage to oppose the “established” truth, although a lot of people – including top-class scientists – see the issue of climate change entirely differently. They protest against the arrogance of those who advocate the global warming hypothesis and relate it to human activities.

As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.

…Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

…I agree with Professor Richard Lindzen from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who said: “future generations will wonder in bemused amazement that the early 21st century’s developed world went into hysterical panic over a globally averaged temperature increase of a few tenths of a degree, and, on the basis of gross exaggerations of highly uncertain computer projections combined into implausible chains of inference, proceeded to contemplate a roll-back of the industrial age”.

The issue of global warming is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom than about tenths of a degree Celsius changes in average global temperature.

As a witness to today’s worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term “scientific consensus”, which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about “the environment”, let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

President Klaus in this column demonstrated courage and common sense to a degree that is lacking, on this issue of global warming, in the leaders of both American political parties. Democrats embrace global warming like lemmings, prepared to follow the pied-piper of the day, Al Gore, off the environmental cliff without considering any of the voluminous contradictory evidence. Republicans, including the President and Newt Gingrich, concur that it is politically inadvisable to question the existence of global warming as a man-made phenomenon and thus are out on the speaking stump proposing solutions for a problem many scientists do not believe is a problem at all. A Republican who bows at the altar of global warming should be sacrificed upon it when voters choose the Party’s nominee for 2008. Blindly following any form of hysteria is a sign of poor judgment that is not worthy of one who would lead the strongest of the world’s free nations.

The fall of communism in Eastern Europe provided the free world with an influx of people starving for liberties and thirsting for freedom, and they, better than many unappreciative and apathetic Americans, recognize threats and intrusions on freedom. President Klaus sees such danger in the global warming movement. The world tends to ignore lone voices in the wilderness, but it would do so at its peril if it chooses to set aside the advice of Vaclav Klaus, a true straight-talking president.

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Vaclav Klaus Global Warming Czech Republic Climate Change Al Gore Hysteria Communism Environmentalists