Czech President Václav Klaus was in America today to speak on his book: “Blue Planet in Green Shackles”. The book is an educated riposte to Al Gore’s ‘Inconvenient Truth’. It tackles the proposed solutions to the so-called ‘climate crisis’ and exposes them for what they are – threats to individual liberty and capitalism.
Rather than summarize the speech in 40 words or less, here it is in MP3 format: Download site 1, Download Site 2, Download Site 3 or listen by clicking below [fyi: I keep exceeded my bandwidth quota, so you may need to try more than one download site - the file should be 9.4MB]:
<transcript>
It is a great pleasure to be here. Let me thank all those who helped to make the English translation and publication of my book “Blue Planet in Green Shackles” possible, especially Fred Smith and his Competitive Enterprise Institute, and those who co-organized the presentation of it in this very prestigious place. I am really excited to finally hold in my hands – after the Czech, German and Dutch editions – the English version of my book.
The authors often claim that their books speak for themselves. I cautiously agree and will, therefore, speak not about the book itself but about my motivations to write it.
To make my position and my message clear, I should probably revoke my personal experience. My today’s thinking is substantially influenced by the fact that I spent most of my life under the communist regime which ignored and brutally violated human freedom and wanted to command not only the people but also the nature. To command “wind and rain” is one of the famous slogans I remember since my childhood. This experience taught me that freedom and rational dealing with the environment are indivisible. It formed my relatively very sharp views on the fragility and vulnerability of free society and gave me a special sensitivity to all kinds of factors which may endanger it.
I do not, however, live in the past and do not see the future threats to free society coming from the old and old-fashioned communist ideology. The name of the new danger will undoubtedly be different, but its substance will be very similar. There will be the same attractive, to a great extent pathetic and at first sight quasi-noble idea that transcends the individual in the name of something above him, (of something greater than his poor self), supplemented by enormous self-confidence on the side of those who stand behind it. Like their predecessors, they will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality. In the past it was in the name of the masses (or of the Proletariat), this time in the name of the Planet. Structurally, it is very similar.
I see the current danger in environmentalism and especially in its strongest version, climate alarmism. Feeling very strongly about it and trying to oppose it was the main reason for putting my book together, originally in Czech language, in the spring of 2007. It has also been the driving force behind my active involvement in the current Climate Change Debate and behind my being the only head of state who in September 2007 at the UN Climate Change Conference in New York City openly and explicitly challenged the undergoing global warming hysteria.
My central concern is – in a condensed form – captured in the subtitle of this book. I ask: “What is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?” My answer is: “it is our freedom.” I may also add “and our prosperity”.
The book was written by an economist who happens to be in a high political position. I don’t deny my basic paradigm, which is the “economic way of thinking”, because I consider it an advantage, not a disadvantage. By stressing that, I want to say that the Climate Change Debate in a wider and the only relevant sense should be neither about several tenths of a degree of Fahrenheit or Celsius, about the up or down movements of sea level, about the depths of ice at North and Southern Pole, nor about the variations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
The real debate should be about costs and benefits of alternative human actions, about how to rationally deal with the unknown future, about what kind and size of solidarity with much wealthier future generations is justified, about the size of externalities and their eventual appropriate “internalization”, about how much to trust the impersonal functioning of the markets in solving any human problem, including global warming and how much to distrust the very visible hand of very human politicians and their bureaucrats. Some of these questions are touched upon in my book.
[...] Czech President Václav Klaus [...]
Saskboy, 3 out your first 5 comments pimping your site aren’t pingbacks.
It would seem you’re advocating government control of resources. That’s worked out well where? Governments do very few things well and many things poorly. Innovative solutions and resource management fall into the latter category.
I am amazed at the arrogance of people who think science has progressed far enough to predict accurately world weather centuries into the future and what the earth is able to sustain.
Gitarfan, if Robert J. thinks my invitation/reply to people to my site is spam, he’s still free to remove or edit the comments. I figured he’d rather I not paste a full length article in here to refute some of the misinformation being tossed around.
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It’s not world weather we’ve reached the capacity to predict, climate on the other hand is an average of weather, and we’ve got enough empirical weather, and precipitation, and ice evidence to suggest there is climate change going on. We don’t need a crystal ball to see that a climate change will likely affect food production, and habitability in many cities. That will lead to governments controlling resources whether we like it or not.
The goal of freedom loving people ought to be to find the acceptable and SUSTAINABLE balance between government and market control of resources, BEFORE peak oil (and peak other staples) forces governments to choose who starves and who doesn’t. It’s undeniable that our economies are not sustainable currently, so even if they’ve worked for us for 100 years, it doesn’t ensure us another 100 years because we’re working with finite resources, and increasing numbers of people.
Saskboy’s comments are classic disinformation of exactly the kind that President Klaus points out – long on emotion and short on fact. The fact is that Klaus is right. Several times this last year the data bases from which global temperature data is derived have been “adjusted”. Luckily climate professionals monitoring this data have pointed it out. 1 year ago, this false data puked out results like ‘8 of the 9 hottest years in the US on record occurred in the last decade.’ Oops. Garbage in, garbage out. The data was false. It was caught. It was corrected. The hottests years were back in the 1930’s. Not related to co2 (which is higher now due in part to burning fossil fuel). Probably related to things like the sun’s activity, variations in the wobble in the earth’s orbit (which is the most important probable cause of long-term climate variation causing things like ice ages), the warming since the “little ice age” and other known and unknown factors. As a trained scientist, I am telling you now that the data support Dr. Klaus. Rather than repeat over and over that humans are causing global warming ( and the data clearly indicate they are not), please provide some objective data to support your contentions. The IPPC document from the UN (which I and many other scientists have studied in depth) is junk science and a political document. I quote here from President Klaus his truly eloquent summation of the reason it is so easy to accept the global warming myths.
“The whole process is already in the hands of those who are not interested in rational ideas and arguments. It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only because a large number of academic careers has evolved around the idea of man-made global warming. It is, further, in the hands of politicians who maximize the number of votes they seek to get from the electorate. It is also – as a consequence of political decisions – in the hands of bureaucrats of national and more often of international institutions who try to maximize their budgets and years of careers as well regardless the costs, truth and rationality. It is in the hands of rent-seeking businesspeople who are – given the existing policies – interested in the amount of subsidies they are receiving and look for all possible ways to escape the for them often merciless, but for the rest of us very positive, general welfare enhancing functioning of free markets. An entire industry has developed around the funds the firms are getting from the government.”
The sooner we are able to de-program the globalists and restore rational thought and rational decision-making to the political process, the better. And President Klaus is doing a wonderful job of standing up against these enviro-liars.
Modern weather tracking has only been around for 200 years or so. That only includes a small part of the world for most of that time. Core samples from ice gives us information about the past but is it enough? How do you know? “Climate change” has been going on for billions of years. Rapid climate change has occurred many times also with no input from man. You don’t need a crystal ball to predict change but one would be nice to accurately predict change and I’m saying we can’t do that now with existing technology. Bad decisions can be and often are worse than no decision at all. Before bankrupting the world’s economy, we should make sure we know what we are doing. Dire warnings from politicians and eco-zealots aren’t going to convince me.
Gitarfan, but would dire warnings backed up with evidence you can see if you want, do it for you?
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Baxter, “The hottests years were back in the 1930’s. Not related to co2 (which is higher now due in part to burning fossil fuel). ”
Were the polar caps melting then to the point where there was speculation in the shipping community that the North West Passage was within their grasp? Was there a large recession of snow accumulation on famous mountains? Was it nearly impossible to have a natural ice rink operate through the Winter months?
“President Klaus his truly eloquent summation of the reason it is so easy to accept the global warming myths.“The whole process is already in the hands of those who are not interested in rational ideas and arguments. It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are highly motivated to look in one direction only because a large number of academic careers has evolved around the idea of man-made global warming. “”
Funny you should mention that as a reason to accept Klaus over evidence. He doesn’t present evidence as to the validity of climate change, he just presents his opinion that he thinks it’s fake. He does so either because he believes that, or because he’s been paid by CEI to write crap like that. CEI is (was) paid by Exxon. Exxon has admitted they paid CEI to create myths about global warming!
It’s absurd that you’d listen to Klaus over another source.
You see, the fact Saskboy is not even aware that there has been no rise in temperature in almost ten years pretty much tells the story. And he doesn’t know that they GISS figures he quotes have been modified by Jim Hansen. Without sufficient information, one would conclude that there is warming due to media coverage. Saskboy, check out SOHO. Where’s SSC 24? Time is on the side of those of us who are rational, because empirical evidence is trending one way, while hysteria is trending the other way. I’d be getting hysterical too if my grant funding was in jeopardy because my climate computer models ended up being empirically disproved over the course of decades. That’s happening now. Stay tuned another five years.
There’s not going to be anything to panic about, but lots to worry the so called International Scientific Consensus, that’s really just UN policy makers who write the IPCC Summary Statements regardless of what the scientists listed actually report.
Saskboy:
It’s completely legitimate for Klaus to be “stuck in the 1950’s” To be more accurate, 40’s, 50’s, 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s….50 years my friend! Most everyone I know who was trapped in communism has been scarred for life. As a consequence, they are accutely aware of, and recognize how communism is camouflaged prior to its jailing of personal freedoms and free markets. My wife is from the Czech Republic and grew up in the system. She and my in-laws, indeed most of the people I know there, are much happier in their fledging capitalist, free market system. Sure things are expensive, but they are willing to work hard and save for the material things that they need and want. The fact that there is open discourse without threat, goes without saying. What’s more is Czechoslovakia wasn’t even that bad compared to the other states capitive in communism. Hunt down a Polish person and have a converstion with them….a real eye opener!
I assume you were born in the US or Canada. In either case, you have never felt the sting of absolute government control. I would wager that you would buckle under such a system. I know I would! Not being able to readily get the necessities of life, let alone talk about it openly. My point is this…be careful to criticize the man’s motives. They based in fact and experience unlike the “man made climate change” movement.
Jeff, you’re right, it is a fact I’m not aware of temperatures allegedly not rising in 10 years. I’m telling you over the last 20 there is an obvious, empirical rise, and it’s seen not only by me, but by people around the world. You’re free to dispute facts, and pick your sources, but the snow and ice can’t lie.
Sailnsmile, I don’t completely discount Klaus’s motives, for the very reason you mention (he lived in a stifling place). However, he’s taken funding from people with a sales pitch that is wrong and destructive. That doesn’t make me want to give him much sympathy, or a very open ear.