Thank you, Vaclav Klaus. In the sanest statement on global warming to issue from officialdom anywhere on the planet, Czech President Vaclav Klaus has called this latest sky-is-falling movement what it really is: “A new incarnation of modern leftism.”
My translation: When you hear “Global Warming,” think “Central Planning.”
In an interview with a Czech financial newspaper, Hospodarske Noviny, picked up in translation by the Drudge Report, Klaus calls global warning a “false myth,” and explains — correctly — that the UN’s IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change), which issued the latest alarmist report, is “not a scientific institution” but “a sort of non-government organization of green flavor.”
Klaus has top credentials for sniffing out central planning schemes, of any flavor. He knows them all too well from Czechoslovakia’s decades behind the Soviet Iron Curtain, when the tint was red. It needs saying again and again. The drumbeat over global warming comes from the UN (here’s a link, again, to some background on the godfather of this movement, Maurice Strong). It is accompanied at every turn by schemes to transfer wealth, with the UN and its affiliates positioning themselves as toll collectors and traffic cops — promising somewhere down the line to reform the weather, but putting a hand out now for the money. And Klaus has it right. The way to clean up the planet is to cultivate private property rights, not central planning camouflaged as new-age environmentalism. Where are the American politicians with the courage to speak up like Klaus?
(Feb 13 update: The translation of Klaus’s interview from Czech was done by Harvard physicist Lubos Motl, whose comment I’ve just posted. That text, which Drudge picked can be found here, on Motl’s web site. -Ed.)
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6 Comments
1. joan:“The way to clean up the planet is to cultivate private property rights”
You could not be more wrong; you could try, but you would not be successful.
America has one of the most fully established private property regimes in the world, it is also the biggest polluter per capita.
Feb 12, 2007 - 9:02 pm 2. bourne2y:“the biggest polluter per capita.”
Oh, Yes!! Yes, yes!! Can’t you imagine Patrick Henry’s cry (were he only enlightened, as we are today) – “Give me waste management or give me dearth!”
What’s the cure for U.S. pollution? Why, I suppose it would be the dissolution of property rights on the expectation that one will keep others’ property cleaner than one’s own. Interesting theory.
Or perhaps, maybe, attributing the prevalence of “pollution” to the presence of a political economy based on free markets is just a silly idea. Doesn’t even explain the litter left behind at Woodstock.
My belief is that Americans since the 60’s have become probably the most self-important, self-centered, self-serving, and self-indulgent people the earth has ever seen. Perhaps – just perhaps, mind you – those qualities have more to do with the propensity to waste and then throw away, than the underlying system of political economy that has produced such a wealth of consumer goods in the first place. Ya think?
For some reason this also reminds me of a study I read not that long ago from which I remember precious little except this:
Per capita, the U.S. throws away three times as much container-waste as Mexico.
Per capita, Mexico throws away three times as much food as the U.S.
Which of these would be considered “pollution”? Well, never mind.
As I recall, this result was linked to inadequate “containerization” in Mexico – be there such a word.
Feb 13, 2007 - 6:58 am 3. L. Scott Davison:Regimes?
Joan, perhaps we should also consider pollution output as a byproduct of production and not penalize countries that produce cleanly. It’s true that the United States pollutes more per-capita than other nations but we also produce more per-capita. Most other nations do not provide goods and services as cleanly as we do. Mechanisms such as the Kyoto Accord and other UN creations seek to reward them for it.
Feb 13, 2007 - 11:07 am 4. Lubos Motl:Very concisely written equation!
If the Drudge Report link stops working, which may happen, here is the original source of the translation.
http://motls.blogspot.com/2007/02/vclav-klaus-about-ipcc-panel.html
Or, click my name…
Feb 13, 2007 - 1:19 pm 5. joan:Scott
I agree that Kyoto is unfair; I also think that if any country comes up with new technologies to comabt global warming, it will lkely be america.
My point was that Claudia’s logic /argument is wrong.
Feb 13, 2007 - 9:28 pm 6. bourne2y:“My point was that Claudia’s logic /argument is wrong.”
You made no “point”. You just asserted a silly point of view. Big difference.
Feb 14, 2007 - 9:29 am