Good Day. This is the Monday, March 12th episode of the Cato Daily

podcast with your host Anastasia Yaglova. Last week the president of the

Czech Republic Vasslav Klaus delivered a speech at the Cato Institute expressing his views on the debate about

global climate change, what causes it, and how to respond to it. I sat down with

President Klaus following his remarks to ask him a few follow-up questions for today's podcast.

Mr President, do you view the environmental movement as an assault on freedom?

Definitely.

This is for me the main argument in the first sentence to say,

we have all of us very much in favor of maximum environment

protection on protecting the nature, but it has nothing in common with environmentalism, which is, I would say,

very illiberal ideology practically attacking our freedom.

So that's a statement I would like to repeat and make quite clear.

You've referred to the environmental movement as a religion.

What are your specific grievances with the movement? Well, environmental movement is not connected so much with individual issues of protecting the nature.

Environmental movement has been moving in time. They immediately discovered one problem

or another or would-be problem or another and when it was discredited and refuted they moved immediately to another issue.

So for me, environmentalism is not defined by various issues concerning nature, but it's defined as a way of introducing new forms

of statism, new forms of masterminding human society from above, something we feel very strongly about

because our experience with communism gives us very special sensitivity in disrespect

and therefore my sensitivity tells me relight. Pay attention.

You refer to your speech at the Cato Institute to sophisticated models based on faulty assumptions used by

environmental scientists to advance their agenda. Can you give an example?

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