Climate Change Movement is a Threat to Democracy - Czech President

On 25 July, the Czech President, Vaclav Klaus said that the climate change movement poses threats to our freedom. He felt threatened, not by global warming, but by the global warming doctrine, which he considers a danger to democracy.

Klaus's experiences under totalitarian rule have made him very aware of threats to democracy. Twenty years ago, he and his people felt threatened by communism. Now he feels threatened by an attempt to control our lives, using climate control as the excuse.

He said that environmentalists had been arguing for decades that we should reduce our use of fossil fuels, using as one of their arguments the threat of imminent mass poverty and starvation for billions.

Those same environmentalists now talk more or less continuously about dangerous man-made global warming. In Klaus's words:

"They don't care about resources or poverty or pollution.

"They hate us, the humans. They consider us dangerous and sinful creatures who must be controlled by them.

"I used to live in a similar world called communism. And I know it led to the worst environmental damage the world has ever experienced."

"They are not interested in climate. They misuse the climate in their goal to restrict our freedom. Therefore ...what is in danger is freedom, not the climate".

He described the parallels he sees between the loss of freedom under communism and the new global warming doctrine.

Under communism, "politics dictated the economics and dictated life. Our main ambition during the dark communist days was to change that and create an autonomous society and autonomous economic system with only a marginal role played by politics ... I am sorry to discover now politics dictates the economics again. And the global warming debate is the same story".

" I am afraid that some of the people who spend their lives in a free society don't appreciate sufficiently all the issues connected with freedom."

At about the same time, Australian Green senator Christine Milne was saying, on ABC-TV, that the Government would be conducting an inquiry into the section of the Australian media which does not believe government climate-change propaganda.


.....ND comment - how's that for the democratic process?



Part of the above digest is based on an article in the Australian newspaper, the Herald Sun; the rest is based on Klaus's speech, available on youtube.

N.D./ habitat21

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