Czech President Vaclav Klaus said Tuesday
he is ready to debate Al Gore about global warming, as he presented the English
version of his latest book that argues environmentalism poses a threat to basic
human freedoms.
"I many times tried to talk to have a public exchange of views with him,
and he's not too much willing to make such a conversation," Klaus said.
"So I'm ready to do it."
Klaus was speaking a the National Press Building in Washington to present his
new book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles - What Is Endangered: Climate or
Freedom?, before meeting with Vice President Dick Cheney Wednesday.
"My answer is it is our freedom and, I might add, and our
prosperity," he said.
Gore a former US vice president who has become a leading international voice in
the cause against global warming, was co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace
Prize. Gore's effort was highlighted by his Oscar winning documentary film An
Inconvienent Truth.
Klaus, an economist, said he opposed the "climate alarmism"
perpetuated by environmentalism trying to impose their ideals, comparing it to
the decades of communist rule he experienced growing up in Soviet-dominated
Czechoslovakia.
"Like their (communist) predecessors, they will be certain that they have
the right to sacrifice man and his freedom to make their idea reality," he
said.
"In the past, it was in the name of the Marxists or of the proletariat -
this time, in the name of the planet," he added.
Klaus said a free market should be used to address environmental concerns and
said he oppposed as unrealistic regulations or greenhouse gas capping systems
designed to reduce the impact of climate change.
"It could be even true that we are now at a stage where mere facts, reason
and truths are powerless in the face of the global warming propaganda," he
said.
Klaus alleged that the global warming was being championed by scientists and
other environmentalists whose careers and funding requires selling the public
on global warming.
"It is in the hands of climatologists and other related scientists who are
highly motivated to look in one direction only," Klaus said, according to dpa.