Vaclav Klaus On Freedom
Vaclav Klaus, the President of the Czech Republic has been speaking out loudly on a subject he knows a great deal about: freedom and lack thereof. He see the climate alarmists and their grand claims and plans for mankind a greater threat than the possibility of global warming.
I recently looked at the European CO2 emissions data covering the period 1990-2005, the Kyoto protocol era. You don't need huge computer models to very easily distinguish three different types of countries in Europe.
In the less developed countries, Greece, Ireland, Portugal and Spain, which during this period were trying to catch up with the economic performance of the more developed EU countries, rapid economic growth led to a 53 per cent increase in CO2 emissions. In the post-communist countries, which went through a radical economic restructuring with the heavy industry disappearing, GDP drastically declined. These countries decreased their CO2 emissions in the same period by 32 per cent. In the EU's slow-growing if not stagnating countries (excluding Germany where its difficult to eliminate the impact of the fact that the east German economy almost ceased to exist in that period) CO2 emissions increased by 4 per cent.
The huge differences in these three figures are fascinating. And yet there is a dream among European politicians to reduce CO2 emissions for the entire EU by 30 per cent in the next 13 years compared to the 1990 level.
What does it mean? Do they assume that all countries would undergo a similar economic shock as was experienced by the central and eastern European countries after the fall of communism? Do they assume that economically weaker countries will stop their catching-up process? Do they intend to organise a decrease in the number of people living in Europe? Or do they expect a technological revolution of unheard-of proportions?
What I see in Europe, the US and other countries is a powerful combination of irresponsibility and wishful thinking together with the strong belief in the possibility of changing the economic nature of things through a radical political project.
The above link is to an excerpt from the speech Klaus just gave at the 2008 International Conference on Climate Change. The entire speech is available at his website.
The true believers are demanding incredible, totalitarian control on humanity. Better start thinking folks. The road to serfdom is being paved right now.
By feeblemind, Thursday, 13 March , 2008 @ 5:08 pm
I have been following Klaus and his rhetoric for some time. I admire him for defending his convictions on the world stage where his opinions are unpopular not only with his peers, but the world’s press. I hope he continues to speak out for years to come.