11 Feb 2007 Vaclav Klaus: Environmentalism is a New Incarnation of Leftism

Harvard Professor Lubos Motl’s website has an English translation of an entertaining, and very hard-hitting, interview Czech Republic President Vaclav Klaus gave recently on global warming.

A couple of quotes:

“…it’s obvious that environmentalism is a new incarnation of modern leftism.””[The idea that Man is demolishing the planet is] such a nonsense that I have probably not heard a bigger nonsense yet.”

“Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying [we’re ruining our planet]: a sane person can’t. I don’t see any ruining of the planet, I have never seen it, and I don’t think that a reasonable and serious person could say such a thing.”

“It’s clear that the poorer the society is, the more brutally it behaves with respect to Nature…”

“It’s also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature – by eliminating private ownership and similar things…”