CZECH REPUBLIC:The movement against global warming has turned into a new religion, an ideology that threatens to undermine freedom and the world's economic and social order, Czech President Vaclav Klaus said yesterday.
He was speaking at the launch of the German translation of his new book, a sceptical look at the worldwide campaign to stop climate change entitled Blue Planet in Green Chains: What Is Under Threat - Climate or Freedom?.
"My answer to that question is unambiguous," said Klaus. "Freedom is under threat.
"Also [ threatened] is the prevailing social and economic order, contemporary civilisation, the current prosperity of developed countries and the chances of developing countries to achieve a similar level of prosperity."
He said the climate change movement was not based on science and that theories about man-made global warming could not be proven.
Mr Klaus, an economist and former Czech prime minister who championed the free market, is one of the world's most vocal climate-change sceptics. On September 24th he gave a speech to the UN General Assembly expressing doubts whether climate change was man-made.
Several diplomats said the UN speech irritated some small island nations and may have cost Prague a hotly contested seat on the UN Security Council.