Nevertheless, there is another threat on the horizon. I see this threat in environmentalism which is becoming a new dominant ideology, if not a religion. Its main weapon is raising the alarm and predicting the human life endangering climate change based on man-made global warming.
Vaclav KlausThe development of European integration can be divided into two phases. The first era ended with the Maastricht Treaty. It was a liberalization phase, with the main goal of European integration at the time being the removal of various barriers and borders in Europe. The second phase is a homogenization or standardization phase, one that involves regulation from the top and growing control over our lives. This no longer has anything to do with freedom and democracy.
Vaclav KlausThen in 1969, I spent the spring term at Cornell University in New York. The invasion of August 1968 had already happened, but the hardline regime took several months to crack down on dissidents.
Vaclav KlausClimate alarmists believe in their own omnipotency, in knowing better than millions of rationally behaving men and women what is right or wrong, in the possibility to give adequate instructions to hundreds of millions of individuals and institutions and the resulting compliance or non-compliance of those who are supposed to follow these instructions.
Vaclav KlausI also helped write the five-page statement of principles that Civic Forum issued in late November. That was the first public expression of what the new government wanted to do.
Vaclav KlausThe climate change debate is basically not about science; it is about ideology. It is not about global temperature; it is about the concept of human society. It is not about nature or scientific ecology; it is about environmentalism, about one - recently born - dirigistic and collectivistic ideology, which goes against freedom and free markets.
Vaclav Klaus