It’s The Freedom, Stupid

Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic, spent most of his life living under communist oppression. So he knows quite a bit about freedom and the suppression thereof. So he speaks with some authority on what he sees as the real objective of the global warming true believers: suppression of freedom.

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.

Read the whole thing. His proposals at the end of the piece should make you think. But his closing one is the best of all:

Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives.

We are already seeing reports of rampant fraud in the UN-run "carbon mitigation" schemes. We are seeing Malaysia's forests destroyed in pursuit of biofuels. We have seen the massacre of orangutans over biofuels to satisfy the true believers. Then there is the killing of people and the theft of land in Colombia so that more biofuel can be produced. We are seeing skyrocketing food prices - and soon enough there will be a world-wide impact as less and less grain is available for food export. We're seeing hedge funds driving all this in order to line the pockets of their investors. And we're seeing one of the largest energy hogs in America - a part owner of a hedge fund - pimping global warming on a global scale. Alexander Cockburn, a proud member of the left, sees this for what it is. So does Vaclav Klaus.

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  By Lars Walker, Thursday, 14 June , 2007 @ 8:05 am

  Today’s environmental movement is nothing more than Marxist revolution by other means.

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  By syn, Thursday, 14 June , 2007 @ 10:29 am

  Today, in the middle of June it’s a sweltering 66 degrees here in NYC.

  Soon a gallon of milk will be more expensive than a gallon of gasoline yet I imagine the collective Marxists will find some way to blame Big Oil.

  Collectivists are a creepy crowd.

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