The Face of Global Warming

When a man who lived under communist rule calls environmentalists response to global warming a greater threat than communism, I think it might behoove us to heed his warning:

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.

That's the President of the Czech Republic, Vaclav Klaus, writing in FT.com. Klaus, an economist, recognizes the extreme environmentalist movement for what it is:

The environmentalists ask for immediate political action because they do not believe in the long-term positive impact of economic growth and ignore both the technological progress that future generations will undoubtedly enjoy, and the proven fact that the higher the wealth of society, the higher is the quality of the environment. They are Malthusian pessimists.

That is the essence of the religion known as Environmentalism - extreme pessimism. Their pessimism about the ability of man to adapt to a changing environment doesn't however extend to any pessimism about their own ability to find a solution to the perceived problem. The arrogance and hubris of believing that not only is man primarily responsible for global warming, but also that we have the ability to reverse the process is stunning to me. As Klaus points out, every school child knows that the climate on earth changes:

Does it make any sense to speak about warming of the Earth when we see it in the context of the evolution of our planet over hundreds of millions of years? Every child is taught at school about temperature variations, about the ice ages, about the much warmer climate in the Middle Ages. All of us have noticed that even during our life-time temperature changes occur (in both directions).

So, what environmentalist believe is that our current climate is ideal and that they have the ability to stop a cycle that has been happening on this planet for millions of years. Yeah, good luck with that....I urge everyone to read the entire editorial. Click on the title of this post.