Václav Klaus: Forget about green dreams

I have been involved in the so-called global warming controversy for two decades. I am one of the veterans of this discipline. I have written dozens of articles on the subject, given many speeches (on every continent) and published three books on it. One of them has been translated into 18 languages. Rather than try to summarize their main message clearly and distinctly myself, I will instead take the liberty of using the formulation of the famous British author Paul Johnson, who a few years ago said, quite aptly, that belief in man-made global warming (now euphemistically called climate change) is "a worldview that is a dogma that has little to do with science."

We have long witnessed that no new argument has changed anything in this debate. I agree with the eminent Australian climate scientist Robert Carter that "the protagonists in the debate remain in the same trenches they occupied in the early 1990s" (in The Future Quest for Climate Control). He put it delicately: the effort to stop climate change "is an extravagant and costly example of utter futility" (p. 32).

Both those who have been trying for years to counter irrational, populist and patently unscientific climate alarmism and the proponents of this alarmist doctrine have remained "in the same trenches" for decades. Yet there are fundamental differences between the two camps. The key is that the opponents are willing to have a debate, while the other side is not. These people are convinced that

- their alarmist views are backed by science;

- the scientific debate is so uncontroversial that it's closed;

- the whole debate is essentially about climate and temperature.

I fundamentally disagree with all of that. This dispute of the contemporary world is not about science, but about ideology. Science is not - and can never be - "closed". "The dispute is about radical changes to human society, our way of life and our freedom, which is what this alarmist doctrine demands" (see my Climate Alarmists' Offensive is Exclusively Politically Driven, Seminar on Planetary Emergencies, World Federation of Scientists, Erice, Italy, 2019).

The public should be informed that the hypothesis that carbon dioxide emissions from human activity are causing dangerous global warming has not been scientifically proven. Certainly not by reality - two recent warmer decades. Nor does the proof come from unrealistic projections and forecasts based on highly problematic mathematical climatological models. Increased CO₂ in the atmosphere may perhaps contribute to a slight and temporary warming (but even that is questionable), but it cannot cause a climate catastrophe.

A similar view was recently expressed by the famous American scientist John F. Clauser, Nobel Prize winner in physics: "There is no climate crisis." In his view, pseudo-science and science fiction outweigh real science in the current debate. German Professor Fritz Vahrenholt makes a similar point in his book 'Unwanted Truths', where he describes the energy crisis as 'self-inflicted' and 'politically induced'.

The notion of 'shared responsibility for climate change' is based on ideas that should be fundamentally rejected. Climate change - in both directions of temperature fluctuations - is a permanent feature of the climate on our planet. There is no need to stop it. More importantly, it cannot be stopped. Trying to stop it cannot therefore be our 'shared responsibility'. The position of the German scientist Bernd Fleischmann that 'climate hysteria is the greatest scientific scandal of modern times' should be taken seriously (see his FaktenzuKlimawandel und Energiewende, 2023, Info@klima-wahrheiten.de).

This brings me to the very problematic topic of the so-called "energy transition". I agree with David King (Economic Euthanasia, Quadrant, November 2023) that 'the transition from fossil fuels to renewables inevitably leads to higher energy costs, massive job losses in industry and other sectors, inevitable and uncontrollable inflation and social unrest'. I am therefore convinced that it is 'our shared responsibility' to prevent this fate.

It is proven that the energy efficiency of renewables - and I apologise for using this problematic term as a shorthand - is significantly lower than the energy efficiency of fossil fuels. Wind and solar are not cheaper than traditional fuels, although it may seem so to the layman - they think the sun and wind are free. It's even the other way around - if we consider what economists call full cost. The only outcome of the forthcoming - and already partially implemented - energy transformation will be ever higher energy prices, and more importantly, these economic costs will be borne by ordinary people, not by coal barons or Arab oil sheiks.

It is humanity's responsibility to prevent such a future. This requires abandoning dreams of the utility of continually subsidising inefficient renewables. We must return to an energy policy that is economically efficient. The market must decide, not green activists. When I say 'market', I mean a market without huge state subsidies for inefficient energy sources.

We do not need to make any transformation of the energy sector. It will come on its own, at the right time, as a manifestation and consequence of new, genuinely more cost-effective technologies. What we need now, however, is a return to economic rationality based on the free market. We need to forget green dreaming and politically promoted economic irrationality.

Václav Klaus, MF Dnes / institutvk.cz / gnews.cz-jav