Here’s someone who really sees the glass as half full:
It’s also true that there exist social systems that are damaging Nature – by eliminating private ownership and similar things – much more than the freer societies. These tendencies become important in the long run. They unambiguously imply that today, on February 8th, 2007, Nature is protected uncomparably more than on February 8th ten years ago or fifty years ago or one hundred years ago.
Generally, he’s seen as a bit too free market, a bit too hard nosed. But Klaus shares with Havel a tendency to speak his mind – with perhaps less wit and tact. Nonetheless, I suspect I’m not the only person charmed by his response when his interviewer asks: “Don’t you believe that we’re ruining our planet?
I will pretend that I haven’t heard you. Perhaps only Mr Al Gore may be saying something along these lines: a sane person hardly.
(Thanks to Instapundit, then to Drudge.)
Update: The interview was then translated in its entirety in the Prague Daily Post – although I retain some affection for the Czenglish quoted above; it is byLubos Motl from his blog, “The Reference Frame.”
Barbara Boxer Shorts is not going to be happy with him.
Actually, Havel is a little too tactful and too anxious to be part of the international fraternity of the great and the good to be any use as a politician. Klaus, on the other hand, is the only European politico around, who can be described as potentially a great man. For the purposes of this discussion I include Britain in Europe.