Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Vaclav Klaus on global warming and environmental alarmism

Power Line blog posted a portion of an address by former Czech Republic president Vaclav Klaus.

I was prepared to post a portion of what Power Line posted, on the relationship between communism and the modern environmental movement--but another portion of the excerpt drew my attention because it appropriately frames the entire issue:
The real debate is and should be about costs and benefits of alternative human actions, about how to rationally deal with the unknown future, about what kind and size of solidarity with much wealthier future generations is justified, about the size of externalities and their eventual appropriate internalization, about how much to trust the impersonal functioning of the markets in solving any human problem, including global warming, and how much to distrust the very visible hand of very human politicians and their bureaucrats.
(Power Line)
That last line sums up the trepidations I have about a unified US government under President Obama. By all accounts an ambitious man whose historic footprints trail through leftist fens.

Update: The Czech proprietor of The Reference Frame, Luboš Motl, stopped by the comments section and left a link to a video of the press club event at which Klaus spoke--at CSPAN. Sincere thanks to Luboš.

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