An interview with Czech President, Vaclav Klaus....

I hope his new book is translated into English....

RFE/RL: You write in your book that socialist ideology has been replaced by the threat of "ambitious environmentalism." Could you define what you mean exactly?

Klaus: Let's keep repeating until we're weary that one thing is ecology, scientific ecology, a descriptive, positive science that describes real things and phenomena in the world and tries to find connections between them and laws and so on. That's not the discipline we're discussing. A completely different thing is this "world view" wrapped up around it that exploits some theories from this or that discipline in order to carry out yet another in a never-ending line of attacks against human freedom and the market economy.

The main attack on the market in the last 150 years has been the softer or stronger versions of what -- now that communism has gone -- is known as the "social market economy," basically the official ideology of Germany and Austria and now the EU. In other words, the main attack on the market and on human freedom has been to add the "social" adjective [to the word "market"].

People know how I began my political career and if there's one expression of mine that's been quoted most, it's the early one from the beginning of the 1990s when I said, "a market without adjectives." In other words let's not spoil things with any adjectives. So the first attack is social, [either] in the softer version of today's European system, [or] in the harder version of communism. Now, more and more, [the words] "social and ecologically oriented" or something similar are added. So it's another attack, [meant to] destroy the market and human freedom and using a slogan -- social in the past and now ecological -- to do something completely different. And for me this is a fundamental attack on human freedom.

As someone who went through communism, I know what this is about and I think it's necessary to sound the alarm. I'm not comparing, like some caricatures have me, the threat of communism versus the threat of environmentalism. Communism was probably worse, though I think that with some of those extreme environmentalists we would live to see something similar. They would be cutting off heads, too, but I'm not comparing them.

If I say that something has replaced something, it's that communism today is no longer a doctrine that could speak to millions, billions of people, where they could go crazy under communist slogans to transform the world. That's why I say this isn't the main danger. The main danger is environmentalism, because there are new, very attractive slogans -- who wouldn't be interested in a clean environment? You'd be mad to say something else -- and this is the path through which, again, we're being fed things that threaten us in a fundamental way.

RFE/RL: Are you skeptical about global warming as a whole, or rather about its extent and the degree to which human behavior can affect it?

Klaus: The word skeptic is inappropriate. How can you be skeptical about whether prices are rising or not? Or how can you be a skeptic about whether you are measuring a temperature or not? Simply put, temperatures are measured and one can't speak about skepticism. Look at the actual numbers and you will see that over the past 100 years the average temperature around the world...has risen by 0.7 degrees Celsius.

In Prague, if you have a thermometer in your car, and you drive from Wenceslas Square [in the city center] to any of the outlying housing estates, the difference in temperature will be, on average, 1.5 to 2 degrees. So, in a five-minute car journey you'll find yourself in another world where the temperature is different by 2 degrees. And you will survive.

Humankind has not even registered the 0.7 degree rise in temperature over the past 100 years. So this is not skepticism regarding measurements. It is a call to reason that says: "Let's not go crazy. If the temperature goes up by 0.7 degrees in a century, let's not go crazy." This is not skepticism. It is an appeal for realism, for a rational approach to looking at the world. I'm not saying that the temperature rise cannot somehow accelerate.

There are countless scientific debates about this. Nevertheless, it is not true, it is just not true that there is a single view on this issue. It is a flat-out lie trumpeted by some media and politically backed groups that there is a scientific consensus about this -- not to mention the fact that "scientific consensus" is not a technical term. When Galileo was alive, the "scientific consensus" was that he was wrong. But that proved nothing. There are equally strong arguments to be made that global warming will not be that big a deal.

But skepticism, that is already a label. And I think it's pointless. So really, it's not about the temperature, now that we're talking about it. The essential point is what is causing this temperature rise -- is it the sun or our planet's internal mechanisms or does man add something to the equation? And here there is an enormous, unending debate. And as a person who is an academic and a university professor, I have to state responsibly that the arguments put forward by both sides are equally well-founded. And to make it appear that there is only one set of arguments is complete nonsense. So this is not about skepticism. I think we have to look at this realistically and not go crazy. That's the main thing: not to go crazy.