Climate concern ripped as 'religion'

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By David R. Sands THE WASHINGTON TIMES

Environmentalism, says Czech President Vaclav Klaus, is the new communism, a system of elite command-and-control that kills prosperity and should similarly be condemned to the ash heap of history.

The provocative Mr. Klaus, an economist by training and former prime minister, said in an interview that today's global warming activists are the direct descendants of the old Marxists who trampled on individual freedoms and undermined free markets in pursuit of a greater good.

"I understand that global warming is a religion conceived to suppress human freedom," he told editors and reporters at The Washington Times. "It is used to justify an enormous scope for government intervention vis-a-vis the markets and personal freedom."

The 66-year-old Mr. Klaus was in Washington this week for talks with senior U.S. officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, and to tout his new book, "Blue Planet in Green Shackles," about the dangers to life, liberty and prosperity posed by the modern environmental movement.

His Washington meetings included discussions on a pact to situate key parts of a U.S. missile defense shield in the Czech Republic. A top Bush administration priority, the system is designed to defend against attacks from rogue states such as Iran.

Mr. Klaus said he expected the Czech parliament to ratify the pact by the end of the year, but acknowledged it "won't be an easy debate."

Russia has fiercely opposed the system, something the Czech president said may actually build public support for the plan back home.

"The stronger the Russian position opposing the system, the easier it is in the Czech Republic to get support," he said.

Having experienced decades of Soviet domination during the Cold War, Czechs are "extremely sensitive to any patronizing from that part of the world," he said.

Mr. Klaus was a leading figure in the first Prague governments after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and was prime minister when the former Czechoslovakia broke into two countries in the "Velvet Divorce" of 1993.