Our freedom is at more risk than our climate

According to a comment piece by Vaclav Klaus in the Financial Times, our freedom is at risk, and not our climate.

"The dictates of political correctness are strict and only one permitted truth, not for the first time in human history, is imposed on us. Everything else is denounced."

The quasi-religious fervour with which climate change sceptics are told they are evil, and equated with holocaust deniers speak volumes - the same way that we are told that AGW *is* happening, and that the debate is over, when, in fact, it is not.

"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."

Would that be because they are a bunch of socialists, disillusioned with the progress the world is making? They are grasping at the last chance to render all people equal, and equally miserable?

"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."

Interesting that the president of the Czech Republic makes this observation - I should think he knows more about the troubles of Communism than most of the environmentalists who are trying to herd us towards it.

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.

I can hear the "but the changes will get worse" already from the doom-sayers. The "the greater good" and "think of the children" and the all time favourite, "something must be done"!

The politicisation of science has been talked about many times before - science is about what is actually happening, and when so much is being discovered about what is happening to the climate and why, what sense does it make to flap about in the hope that something we do now might prevent something later... What if by preventing something later we're actually doing even more harm to our environment? There is still a lot of noise that hasn't been suppressed by the environMENTALISTS over CO2 - does CO2 follow temperature rise?

Instead of speaking about the environment, we should be attentive to it in our daily lives - reminds me of older relatives telling me not to leave a light "burning" when I am not using it - sensible things that save money... Speaking of such things, George Moonbat has apparently bought himself a car, after however many years of preaching about cars being evil. Yet another do as I say, not as I do.