Crowds are untrustworthy.
The larger parts of crowds may merely be attracted to the buzz, the novelty and, well, the crowd.
This post isn’t an argument against a green future, nor supports new scientific claims, but is a necessary post because we must move forward with caution and be wary of crowds.
Vaclav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, is going against the crowd and recent policies responding to global warming.
Klaus argues in the Financial Times that ambitious environmentalism is the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity. Strong words.
Is he to be grouped with other leaders on the fringe, such as South Africa’s President Thabo Mbeki questioning the link between HIV and Aids? Or George W. Bush as he flames evil-doers?
Vaclav Klaus writes,
and answers a swarm of questions and comments,
that “global warming hysteria has become a prime example of the truth versus propaganda problem”.
He asserts that the issue “is more about social than natural sciences and more about man and his freedom” than about global temperature.
“As someone who lived under communism for most of his life, I feel obliged to say that I see the biggest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy and prosperity now in ambitious environmentalism, not in communism. This ideology wants to replace the free and spontaneous evolution of mankind by a sort of central (now global) planning.”
Ed Ring at EcoWorld stands behind Klaus and is incensed as millions of acres of forest are sacrificed for artificially profitable biofuels or when Washington spends billions on ethanol infrastructure that warps and damages related food, land and water systems – a net effect of more warming and less efficiency than using fossil fuels.
“As scientists and politicians catch up with independent minded skeptics like President Klaus, we will hopefully stop the anti-CO2 agenda, and return to things that matter, like eliminating truly noxious pollutants, reversing tropical deforestation, and continuing to develop clean and efficient fossil fuel while we eventually transition to nuclear and solar power.”