Czech on the Environment

Modra, nikoli zelena planeta: Co je ohrozeno: klima, nebo svoboda?
(A Blue, not Green Planet: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?)
By Vaclav Klaus
164 pages, Prague: Dokoran, 2007 (in Czech)

Just when you thought the terrible totalitarian ideologies that caused so much suffering in the 20th century had been relegated to the past, another incarnation of evil is on the horizon. Called environmentalism, it is the most prominent anti-liberal, populist ideology of the contemporary world, comparable to communism and Nazism. At least, that is, according to Czech President Vaclav Klaus.

The rise of environmentalism is, in Klaus’s view, closely intertwined with the worldwide debate over climate change. He agrees with the views of many scientists and politicians who maintain that we cannot, with any degree of certainty, link climate change to human activity. Although such views arguably represent a minority of the world’s scientific and political community, in most cases they would not draw much attention.

Klaus, however, wants attention. And that is why he is fighting a political — not a scientific — battle. His recent book, Modra, nikoli zelena planeta: Co je ohrozeno: klima, nebo svoboda? (A Blue, not Green Planet: What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?), argues that climate change is a crisis invented and hyperbolized by naive politicians and environmentalists. Although he supports the arguments in his book with reasonable quotes from, for the most part, reputable scientists, he draws extreme conclusions about what the current debate over climate change means from a political point of view. "The biggest source of dangers for freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th century and at the beginning of the 21st century ceased to be socialism, but it is now an ambitious, very arrogant, and almost unscrupulous ideology of a political movement… of environmentalism." Never mind the crumbling global economy or unstable nuclear powers: To Klaus, tree-hugging environmentalists are much, much worse.

On the surface, Klaus’s argument is simple. Proponents of combating climate change with regulations, led by their beloved figurehead Al Gore, simply use the false threat of an impending global apocalypse, supposedly caused by the human destruction of nature, to limit freedom. The threat to personal freedoms comes, in his opinion, from a number of regulatory measures, ranging from decisions by the European Union (EU) to set quotas on its members’ future energy production to broad international environmental treaties such as the Kyoto Protocol. Yet, Klaus argues, the answer to any real problems with the environment is allowing the invisible hand of the market to rule supreme.

According to Klaus, the ideology of environmentalism started modestly and with good intentions. However, over time, honest attempts to protect nature have been replaced by more ambitious goals to regulate human societies. As a result, environmentalism has become a menacing alternative to ideologies that value human freedom. This new ideology no longer has anything to do with natural sciences or, what’s worse, with social sciences. It is, in essence, a metaphysical doctrine, one that refuses to see nature or humanity "the way they are."

Klaus himself does not deny that climate change exists. However, we shouldn’t panic, he says. The changes may be part of regular planetary cycles in which ice ages alternate with periods of warming. The sun’s activity may also be a factor.

We should also remain calm in the face of warnings about a supposed depletion of natural resources. The very notion of a natural resource is, after all, dependent on market forces and scientific progress. Many potential resources are still untapped because we do not yet have the knowledge to take advantage of them. Give people enough freedom, and they will come up with the right answers to all possible problems at the right moment, or so the argument goes. Because there has always been progress, we can be sure that scientific progress will take care of potential problems by, for example, finding new sources of energy. Market forces also play an important role because people start looking for alternatives when current resources become too expensive. In this respect, Klaus is so firmly rooted in rationalism and classical liberalism that in his world, those philosophies become religions in their own right.

A majority of Klaus’s arguments on climate change would not deserve much attention, as they have been already made — or debunked — by others. But they merit attention for two reasons. First, Klaus couches his arguments not as a mere battle for a correct scientific interpretation of reality, but as an attempt to describe a new totalitarian ideology. Second, Klaus is the Czech president, and it is rare for a national leader to be so involved in an ideological battle of this sort, much less a battle that is not likely to win any political popularity. Yet, Klaus remains quite popular at home: He was reelected to a second five-year term in February, and he enjoys high approval ratings.

The most damning aspect of Klaus’s warnings about environmentalism is that he does exactly what he accuses that movement of doing. He claims there is a major global threat, and he uses this supposed threat to drum up support for his ideas. For example, he draws absurd comparisons between the prescriptions of modern environmentalists and the Nazis’ ecological programs. In general, Klaus’s sources are inaccurate and unreliable. Several Czech scientists who reviewed his book pointed out more than 100 factual mistakes, inaccuracies, and misrepresentations.

Klaus says he represents a silent majority of people skeptical of climate-change hysteria. And though his book has sold 15,000 copies — considered a success in his country — many copies were likely "required reading" for political friends and foes alike. Sales in Germany, where the book was published late last year, have been weak. That is not to say that Klaus doesn’t have his share of fans. Ideological think tanks in the United States and elsewhere, such as the libertarian Cato Institute in Washington and the ultraconservative, Exxon-supported Heartland Institute in Chicago, find common cause with Klaus and have featured him as a representative of the other side of the climate-change debate. Heartland, for example, ran advertisements featuring Klaus as Gore’s main opponent in major American newspapers in the run-up to the U.N. conference on climate change last September. Klaus’s speech at the conference contributed to a major foreign-policy setback for the Czech Republic, whose diplomats claim they had enough support before the speech to win a seat on the U.N. Security Council. After Klaus’s speech, however, several countries withdrew their support, and the Czech Republic lost out to Croatia.

Why does Klaus give voice to such controversial views? Czechs like intellectuals as presidents, and he is trying to follow in the footsteps of his predecessor, Vaclav Havel (for whom I once worked as a political advisor). However, because he does not carry Havel’s intellectual authority, certainly not outside Czech borders, he attempts to draw attention to himself with intellectual provocations. In that sense, his controversial stand on global warming is just one of many: He is also the fiercest critic of European integration among senior policymakers in Europe, as well as a critic of what he calls "NGOism" and "humanrightism." In trying to provoke the rest of the world, he carefully selects topics that do not resonate much at home. His forays into the climate-change dispute leave most Czechs indifferent. Most don’t understand what he talks about, but they consider his activities to be "intellectual" and the source of some international reaction — something they also associated with Havel. They aren’t aware that Klaus’s international reputation as a public intellectual is really in no way comparable to Havel’s.

Czech public opinion likely won’t change unless and until Klaus causes some real political damage to his country. The U.N. defeat in September may have just been a blip. But there is more potential for trouble when the Czech Republic presides over the EU presidency in the first half of 2009. Klaus will have a Europe-wide podium to voice his views, with the opportunity to even stall some initiatives to combat global warming.

Until then, he will be viewed as a rarity of sorts — someone most Czechs see, justified or not, as a competent politician — and as an entertainer in the realm of cerebral pursuits. Klaus’s own intellectual aspirations may be serious, but his attempts to be provocative by advocating such extreme views on the global-warming debate have, at least in the international arena, left him as a pawn to the losing side of the argument.