Between 10:58 and 11:03 EDT, the Czech president was speaking about the global warming hysteria in the U.N. on Monday (9/24/2007), see transcript and I. adaptation and live stream on this blog
The 9-minute video containing mostly Klaus' speech is available in RealPlayer's IVR format or ordinary RealVideo
The DailyKos that has previously declared, together with the Huffington Post, that Václav Klaus is the best politician in the world if you allow me to simplify a little bit, also has a different kind of posters.
No, I don't mean Lenin himself.
A. Siegel, a Kossack, now argues that the U.S. Congress should condemn the ad showing Klaus and Gore. The author has found eight main arguments:
- a kindergarten drawing of the Earth, with "RIP" on it
- the observation that Klaus is a greater skeptic than Dick Cheney
- Klaus disagrees with a future Nobel prize winner Al Gore so he must be wrong
- the statement that global warming is not "a crisis", but "the crisis"
- a proof of global warming involving swimming suits
- well-known sentences containing the words "ExxonMobil" and "funding"
- a videoclip of "Don't worry be happy"
- the future of the Czech Republic in the U.N.
Well, that's a convincing package, indeed. Perhaps, the Democrat Congress should be advised by DailyKos to nuke the Prague Castle to help the Czech Republic become a member of the U.N. security council. ;-)
Well, Siegel's posting is surely silly enough to be entertaining. But let me discuss one particular topic that the author mentioned - the reactions of other Czech politicians.
Siegel writes that the Czech government disagrees with Klaus's views. That is, to put it mildly, a misleading description of reality. The Czech government has never made a joint statement about related issues. The prime minister thinks that his government should better "look into the problem" before "the socialists benefit out of it".
The environment minister who is the Green Party chairman (the leader of a junior party in the coalition) has a duty to behave in a green way. So he has politely recommended Klaus to talk about bike paths and the public transportation in Prague instead. :-) According to Mr Bursík, if Klaus talks about something else, Czechia would lose the votes of the island countries that were going to be flooded by global warming. ;-) Klaus answered to him equally politely.
Jiří Paroubek, the chairman of the social democratic opposition (on the left side of the picture), wrote another letter to Klaus, claiming that Klaus has to represent views like those of Paroubek. Klaus replied that he was invited as Klaus and he can and he will offer his own views. Klaus thanked Paroubek for his participation in the public debate that should continue even though, hopefully, Paroubek's future contributions will be more material and rational than the present ones. ;-) For example, Paroubek's separation of companies into "good ones" that consume energy and "bad ones" that produce energy is indeed childish, isn't it?
Concerning the speculations that the talk may hurt the membership of Czechia in the U.N. security council, I suspect that the ministry of foreign affairs led by Karel Schwarzenberg is the most relevant body to have an opinion here. It has determined that the speech won't impair Czechia's ambitions. Schwarzenberg agrees that Klaus should talk in harmony with his opinions.
While many Czechs in various polls say that they believe that global warming could be man-made and maybe even dangerous, there doesn't exist any aggressive movement in the Czech Republic that would promote this opinion as an important one; this statement implies that the environment movements such as "Rainbow" are neither too aggressive nor relevant.
The most relevant reason is that it is impossible to earn big bucks from this opinion in Czechia. It will probably continue to be impossible in the future because Czechs are very skeptical about this kind of fads. They wouldn't be paying big money to speakers such as Gore for repeating some obnoxious clichés about climate change.
Also, I think that it is ludicrous to expect that "island countries" would be irritated by the talk. Quite on the contrary: the people in these countries are those who actually understand what's happening with the sea level, who know that it is increasing by 3 millimeters per year or less, and that this simply won't be any problem in any foreseeable future. It is mostly the people who live far away from the sea who are ready to believe fairy-tales that this is going to be a problem.
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