Global Warming Scam is a War on Economic Liberty

“The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.” — Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic, current President of the EU.

Václav Klaus, the Czech Republic’s opinionated president and current president of the European Union, will keynote a session of the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change, March 8-10, in New York.

Klaus, who holds the EU presidency as it rotates among the 27 member nations, has been an outspoken and controversial skeptic about the causes and severity of global warming.

His recent book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, argues that the debate over global warming has “become a symbol and example of the clash between truth and propaganda.” He makes the case that policies being proposed to address global warming are not justified by current science and are, in fact, a dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity around the world.

Global warming is one of several issues that Klaus, 67, advances against the prevailing view of other EU members.

James M. Taylor, senior fellow at The Heartland Institute and organizer of the conference, said, “President Klaus is a human rights warrior and a true champion of basic human freedoms. His insight into the negative correlation between heavy-handed greenhouse gas restrictions and basic human freedoms will provide a sensational addition to the 2009 International Conference on Climate Change.”

Joseph Bast, president of The Heartland Institute, producer of the event along with more than 40 co-sponsors, said, “In the past nine months, the science has grown even more convincing that global warming is not a crisis. The crisis has been cancelled by sound science and common sense.”

Klaus joins a line-up of more than 70 speakers, including the world’s climate science elite, economists, and meteorologists, including:

• José María Aznar, former prime minister of Spain
• American astronaut Dr. Jack Schmitt
• Richard Lindzen, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s leading experts in dynamic meteorology, especially planetary waves
• William Gray, Colorado State University, leading researcher into tropical weather patterns
• Willie Soon, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
• Roy Spencer, University of Alabama at Huntsville, principal research scientist and team leader on NASA’s Aqua satellite

Dan Miller, executive vice president of The Heartland Institute, a 25-year-old national nonpartisan think-tank based in Chicago, said, “All of the event’s expenses will be covered by admission fees and individual and foundation donors to Heartland. No corporate dollars earmarked for the event were solicited or accepted.”

For more information about the conference and journalist accreditation, click here.

About the Václav Klaus book

In his provocative new book on environmental policy, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, Václav Klaus, President of the Czech Republic makes the case that policies being proposed to address global warming are not justified by current science and are, in fact, a dangerous threat to freedom and prosperity around the world.

Klaus argues that the environmental movement has transformed itself into an ideology that seeks to restrict human activities at any cost, while pursuing an impossible utopian dream of a perfectly “natural” world.

The supposed threat of human civilization against a fragile Earth has become an article of faith, especially in the realm of global warming activism.

“The largest threat to freedom, democracy, the market economy, and prosperity at the end of the 20th and at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism,” writes Klaus. “It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism.”

“Today, the global warming debate raging in both the United States and Europe has become extremely contentious. On both sides of the Atlantic, the debate has metastasized into cultural warfare against economic liberty,” writes the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s President Fred L. Smith, Jr. in the book’s foreword. “For that reason, pro-freedom voices are needed to reframe the debate to show how a free people can better address the challenges facing Western civilization. To that end, we are proud to publish Blue Planet in Green Shackles.”