Friday 20 July 2007

Vaclav Klaus, Czech President

He ended a recent article in the FT with this:

"As a witness to today's worldwide debate on climate change, I suggest the following:
■Small climate changes do not demand far-reaching restrictive measures
■Any suppression of freedom and democracy should be avoided
■Instead of organising people from above, let us allow everyone to live as he wants
■Let us resist the politicisation of science and oppose the term "scientific consensus", which is always achieved only by a loud minority, never by a silent majority
■Instead of speaking about "the environment", let us be attentive to it in our personal behaviour
■Let us be humble but confident in the spontaneous evolution of human society. Let us trust its rationality and not try to slow it down or divert it in any direction
■Let us not scare ourselves with catastrophic forecasts, or use them to defend and promote irrational interventions in human lives."

Poetry, pure poetry.

3 comments:

CityUnslicker said...

I think there is some benefit to the current noise though, in that people are aware of a need for change in how we treat the world.

This is no bad thing, the worst thing of our current democratic system is the downgrading of serious issues in the face of celebrity gossip.

Live Earth shows that people now consider this an issue; but not enough of one to dismantle western capitalism as the lefty loons would like us to do.

All in all, going quite well so far.

Mark Wadsworth said...

What appealed to me was the fact that he wasn't just talking about enviro-fascists - if you delete a couple of points, he could just as well be talking about any totalitarians, be they Communists, Nazis, socio-fascists or Islamo-fascists.

James Higham said...

So you've stuck with him for a long while, Mark, until his final capitulation.

Sad about that but his life may well have been in danger.