"Environmentalism Religion Rather Than Science, Says Czech Leader
By Kevin Mooney
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 12, 2007

"(CNSNews.com) - Centralized planners seeking to "rule from above" are operating under the guise of environmentalism and other fashionable "isms" in a bid to attack freedom and liberty, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said here.

Addressing an audience at the CATO Institute in Washington, D.C., on Friday, Klaus argued that although communism has been eradicated in Eastern Europe, there are renewed efforts in this new century to reintroduce statist schemes.

Those who have experienced the absence of freedom in their lifetimes have a "special sensitivity" to dangerous and disturbing trends at work in Europe and America, Klaus said.

He identified what he said were three main "internal challenges" to freedom.

Fashionable and trendy "isms" like environmentalism seek to "radically re-organize human society" in a way that is detrimental to the freedoms that were secured just 17 years ago when Soviet communism fell, he argued.

Proponents of the environmental ideology were attempting to sell the public on "catastrophic scenarios" that could be used to justify the restoration of statist practices, he said.

"The hypothesis of global warming, and the role of man, is the most powerful embodiment of environmental ideology," Klaus observed. Although the environmental movement invokes science as a way of advancing policy goals, the arguments in favor of catastrophe rest on "ill-founded assumptions," he said.

"Environmentalism is a religion. It does not belong in the natural sciences and is more connected with social science."

Klaus said very few politicians and journalists understand that environmentalism is a political ideology masquerading as a natural science.

Other "isms" that he argued pose threats to order include "social democratism," "human rightism," "internationalism" and "multi-culturalism." These movements all proceed from a desire to "centrally organize, mastermind, regulate and control society," he said.

Freedom is also threatened by the drive toward global governance, the Czech leader argued. He said he had misgivings about the European Union and moves towards de-nationalizing countries.

Freedom in Europe is best secured over the long term, Klaus said, through a parliamentary democracy that exists within "a clearly defined state territory."

Those who are armed with the "special sensitivity" of having lived under communism see the trend toward "supranationalism" as incompatible with freedom and individual liberty, he said.

Klaus told Cybercast News Service he was not sure that the current generation of young people can ever fully appreciate what living conditions were like not so long ago in communist regimes.

For that reason, the centralized controlling agenda he associates with such ideologies as environmentalism tends to go largely undetected, he said."

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