Book Report

How environmentalism has replaced Communism as the biggest threat to human freedom and prosperity Blue Planet In Green Shackles: What is Endangered? Climate or Freedom? By Vaclav Klaus The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism or Communism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism. So writes Vaclav Klaus, president of the Czech Republic, in Blue Planet in Green Shackles: What Is Endangered -- Climate Or Freedom? In this brilliantly argued book, Klaus argues that the environmental movement has transformed itself into an ideology that seeks to restrict human activities at any cost, and that policies being proposed to address global warming are both economically harmful -- especially to poor nations -- and utterly unjustified by current science. Even through environmentalism boasts about its scientific basis, argues Klaus, it is, in fact, essentially a metaphysical ideology that refuses to see the world, nature, and humankind as they really are. It has no regard for technological progress and takes the current state of the world and nature as an untouchable standard, any changes to which would be a fatal jeopardy. Moreover, the environmentalists' attitude toward nature is analogous to the Marxist approach to economics: the aim in both cases is to replace free enterprise and individual liberty by the would-be optimal, central, or -- using today's fashionable adjective -- global planning of world development. In Blue Planet in Green Shackles, you'll discover: How poor countries have been taken hostage by environmentalists, who propose halting human progress at immense costs Environmentalism as a quasi-religious and profoundly anti-human ideology that shares many traits with Marxism How, in pursuit of a utopian dream of a perfectly "natural" world, today's environmentalists aspire to change humankind, human behavior, the structure of society, the system of values -- simply everything Political techniques environmentalists have borrowed from socialism -- such as masking their attacks on human freedom with humane and compassionate slogans How the bizarre essence of environmentalism becomes clear when we see how the character of environmentalist attacks changes over time The author's debate with Al Gore and critique of his book, Earth in the Balance, and his Oscar-winning documentary, An Inconvenient Truth How Gore's moralism is symptomatic of environmentalists Fundamental economic laws that are completely neglected by environmentalists Cui bono? How the advocates and promoters of the global warming hypotheses are mostly scientists who profit from their research, both financially and in the form of scientific recognition The long-since-disproven myth of nonrenewable resource exhaustion that drives environmentalist efforts to reduce and regulate consumption The importance of wealth in solving the problems we face Why technological changes will be more far-reaching than climate changes Why developing countries' best defense against climate risks is their own economic development How failure to factor in technological progress and economic growth leads to an overestimate of the effects of climate change The so-called "precautionary principle": how environmentalists misuse it to justify intervention without evidence Problems with "renewable" energy What is really happening with global warming -- and why, if it's man-made, does it occur on other planets? The benefits of global warming The effects of political influence on science The "hockey stick" debate Nature climate variability and the nature of current warming The political nature of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Why economic growth is the solution to real environmental problems -- and why the proper response to so-called global warming is to do nothing. Yes, nothing