Posted: 05/28/2008
Klaus Challenges Gore To Climate Debate
NCPA Expert Agrees That Catastrophic Predictions Are Suspect At Best
WASHINGTON (May 28, 2008)-Comparing global warming hysteria to a communist ideology, Czech President Václav Klaus said he is ready to debate global warming with former Vice President and Nobel Peace Prize winner Al Gore.
"President Klaus points what is increasingly obvious: the substantial costs of current environmentalist proposals to combat global warming far outweigh the benefits," said NCPA Senior Fellow H. Sterling Burnett, "especially since none of those proposals will substantively reduce the likelihood of future warming."
Klaus, who also is an NCPA Distinguished Leader, made his remarks at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. while presenting his new book, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles-What Is Endangered: Climate or Freedom?"
"My answer is, it is our freedom and, I might add, our prosperity," Klaus added. "The real debate should be about the costs and benefits of alternative human actions, about how to rationally deal with the unknown future... Like their predecessors, [environmentalists] will be certain that they have the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea a reality. In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat-this time, [it's] in the name of the planet. Structurally, it is very similar."
"President Klaus's views deserve the same public consideration that former Vice President Gore received for his now discredited work on climate change," Burnett added, endorsing the debate.
Klaus's new book was published by the Competitive Enterprise Institute. Just last year, his institute, the Center for Economics and Politics (http://cepin.cz/en/index.php), reprinted the NCPA's Global Warming Primer in Czech.