Carbon dioxide: Part 12

The Heartland Institute's 2008 International Conference on Climate Change in Manhattan has just been completed. You can poke around at that web site for information, but I want to call your attention to one presentation at the conference. Václav Klaus, the president of the Czech Republic, is an outspoken critic of those who promote climate change for political ends.

Shawn Macomber of the American Spectator quoted Václav Klaus saying, "It is not about climatology . . . It is about freedom." Please read the full text of his speech for your own benefit (and these comments) because he warns about the use of climate change to usurp our freedoms.

"I am also afraid that the same people, imprisoned in the Malthusian tenets and in their own megalomaniac ambitions, want to regulate and constrain the demographic development, which is something only the totalitarian regimes have until now dared to think about or experiment with. Without resisting it we would find ourselves on the slippery "road to serfdom." The freedom to have children without regulation and control is one of the undisputable human rights and we have to say very loudly that we do respect it and will do so in the future as well."

He closed his speech, saying:

"We have to restart the discussion about the very nature of government and about the relationship between the individual and society. Now it concerns the whole mankind, not just the citizens of one particular country. To discuss this means to look at the canonically structured theoretical discussion about socialism (or communism) and to learn the uncompromising lesson from the inevitable collapse of communism 18 years ago. It is not about climatology. It is about freedom. This should be the main message of our conference."

This man knows personally the loss of freedom imposed on the Czech people by the former Soviet Union. He is capable of looking beyond the alleged climate change to the dark politics that would be imposed worldwide to counter it. The climate change movement is not just some anti-smoking kick to get rid of some annoyance by robbing our freedom. It is a life and death struggle to take away freedom around the entire globe to use energy, the blood of life.

The western world, culminating in Ronald Reagan’s "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall," brought freedom to the Czechs. But that same western world is now threatening the freedom of all peoples in the world. It is incumbent on all freedom loving people to heed Václav Klaus. It is not about climatology. It is about freedom.