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September 19th, 2007 issue

Czech Ambassador to the United Nations Martin Palouš has been talking a lot to folks in the Caribbean and other island countries lately.

While his colleagues like to tease Palouš about the nice beaches he has seen and the fancy seafood dishes he must be enjoying, he’s not doing it as a vacation.

Palouš is the Czech Republic’s point man in its push to become a nonpermanent member of the UN Security Council. As a UN representative, he is lobbying the island nations because even though their populations may be small, their votes all carry equal weight at the UN.

Winning the competitive two-year UN Security Council seat in 2008 would give the Czech Republic more of a role as an important world player. Moreover, Palouš would be involved with issues that could affect the country politically and economically, such as whether Kosovo should become independent and the placement of weapons systems in Europe.

While Palouš has been busy all summer lining up votes, the Heartland Institute, a conservative think tank in the United States, has recruited President Václav Klaus as its poster boy in a newspaper ad campaign that asserts that “Global Warming is Not a Crisis.” (See story, page A2.) Klaus will be given five minutes to espouse this view at a UN conference Sept. 24. Heartland Institute representatives say they expect to spend $1 million (19.8 million Kč) on their campaign in some of the United States’ most prominent newspapers, including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Times.

Klaus has said his contrarian views on climate change are about economic freedom — an easy stance to adopt in Central Europe. But the issue looks different in the island nations that Palouš has been visiting. If current global warming trends continue, there’s a threat of oceans rising as much as 23 inches (58 centimeters) in the next 100 years, according to a UN report. Former U.S. Vice President Al Gore has warned of even more dire changes in ocean levels.

Heartland Institute authorities put the potential rise at just a millimeter or so.

Reasonable people can disagree, but they shouldn’t ignore what’s happening in the rest of the world. Singapore, for example, is taking the threat of rising ocean levels seriously enough to start talking to the Netherlands about how to build massive dike systems that can protect its shorelines in the future.

Like anyone else, Klaus is entitled to his opinion. But he and everyone else in this country should be concerned about how his activities impact the Czech Republic’s status on the world stage.

The tenure of his predecessor offers an interesting contrast. While Václav Havel may not have been a great government administrator, his concern for human rights and his impassioned, literate speeches elevated the Czech Republic in the eyes of the world. Havel was perceived as a progressive thinker with moral authority, and his country benefited by association.

It’s hard to imagine a similar scenario with Klaus, who is not being paid for his work with the Heartland Institute but is obviously benefiting from the personal notoriety. And it’s dismaying to think of the legacy of Havel, and the work of people like Palouš, being undercut by Klaus’ one-man band.

We respect and appreciate differing views. But in this case we also offer a reminder: Perception matters.

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