In the Czech Republic we may well need a green Velvet Revolution

There are few clearer examples of the confusion in up to date Czech public life than the talk over the local weather disaster. The Czech financial system is without doubt one of the most carbon-intensive within the European Union, and the nation’s per-capita emissions are far worse than the European – not to mention international – common. However the Czech debate on local weather change displays neither the urgency of the difficulty nor the nation’s particular duty as one of many world’s main polluters.

Czech authorities coverage has a protracted historical past of neglecting environmental priorities. This may be illustrated by many examples, however among the many most telling are the low stage of development of recent renewable vitality sources and the dearth of dedication to carbon neutrality by a sure date. Usually talking, Czech local weather coverage solely strikes ahead below strain from the European Union: if the European establishments didn’t promote local weather coverage, it’s extremely probably that there can be no such coverage within the Czech Republic.

This was not all the time the case. The catastrophic state of the atmosphere was one of many predominant causes for the delegitimisation of the communist regime earlier than its fall in November 1989. In reality, inexperienced teams and their calls for had been an integral a part of the actions that introduced down communist regimes all through the Soviet bloc. The Czech Republic was no exception.

After the Velvet Revolution, many environmentalists grew to become members of governments, and their achievements, resembling lowering air air pollution by setting limits on coal mining and higher defending nature, are among the many undoubted successes of the post-1989 adjustments. The Czechoslovak revolution of 1989 was not solely “velvet” but in addition inexperienced.

Nonetheless, with a couple of exceptions, Czech society’s curiosity within the atmosphere steadily waned below the brand new democratic situations. And as we speak, Czech society exhibits a deep ignorance of the present local weather disaster. What are the explanations for this decline?

There isn’t a straightforward reply to this query. Nonetheless, we will determine some key themes within the Czech debate on the local weather disaster.

Give attention to productivism

There’s a robust custom in Czech political debate of emphasising the nation’s productive capability. Many politicians promote giant infrastructure initiatives resembling motorways, nuclear energy crops, mines or automobile factories. It is a lengthy custom relationship again to the interval instantly following the Industrial Revolution, when the Austrian Empire determined to pay attention a lot of its heavy trade in its Czech “periphery”.

Specializing in heavy trade was additionally a prime precedence of the pre-1989 communist regime. Czechoslovakia was typically referred to as the “forge of socialism”; many kinds of predominantly heavy industries produced a variety of strategic and shopper items for the entire of the previous Soviet bloc.

Leaders of the communist regime had a fantastic ardour for lengthy lists of statistics concerning the variety of vehicles and fridges produced, uncooked supplies extracted, flats constructed, even tonnes of metal and cement. This didn’t finish with the autumn of the Communist Celebration.

The neoliberal flip of the Nineteen Nineties – not the unique ambition of the 1989 revolutions – promised to steer the nation out of socialist ‘backwardness’ and meet up with Western economies. Virtually three many years after this ambition was proclaimed, it’s truthful to explain it as a spectacular fiasco.

By most purely financial indicators, the Czech financial system is nowhere close to the efficiency of Western economies. The hole is most pronounced in areas the place effectivity issues. Furthermore, the revenue hole between the Czech Republic and most Western European nations remains to be about the identical because it was thirty years in the past.

This doesn’t forestall just about each prime minister from repeatedly promising to “meet up with the West”. The present one, Petr Fiala of the conservative ODS occasion, isn’t any exception.

His imaginative and prescient, lately offered at a convention of the nation’s strongest firms, is to take a position closely in infrastructure, resembling constructing a whole bunch of kilometres of recent motorways or new nuclear reactors on the Dukovany energy station. On the identical time, he desires to chop public spending.

Giant inexperienced initiatives resembling wind farms or help for group vitality methods are additionally a part of the prime minister’s imaginative and prescient for the longer term, however solely to realize a extra “trendy” and productive financial system. The Czech Republic must be “a rustic the place it pays to stay, to take a position, but in addition to journey for holidays or to review,” Fiala advised the convention. It sounds good, however it’s a fallacy.

Certainly, the nation is experiencing a gentle mind drain, with lots of its most gifted younger individuals selecting to stay in additional privileged components of Europe. And the coverage of austerity, which has undermined budgets for training, well being, tradition and different areas important to a superb high quality of life, can solely exacerbate this development.

To not point out the truth that the authoritarian and far-right opposition is reaping the rewards of the federal government’s short-sighted austerity insurance policies. The almost definitely situation now could be that the nation will observe the trail of Slovakia and Hungary after the elections in two years’ time.

Let technocrats – and oligarchs – clear up the local weather disaster

The precedence given to productivism has the impact of minimising political debate on key points. Politicians don’t want to supply coverage visions, solely one of the best ways to extend financial output. In different phrases, the very best politician is an professional, somebody with a technocratic background who ‘is aware of how issues work’.

Technocracy has lengthy been influential within the Czech Republic, and ‘specialists’ have historically been seen because the individuals to show to for salvation. This tendency is probably stronger in Czech political tradition than elsewhere; the Czechs are typically described as a “nation of engineers”.

One of the best instance of this phenomenon is the utterly irrational relationship of the Czech political institution to nuclear energy. This has deep roots within the communist period, when the thought of constructing one nuclear energy plant per five-year plan was born. The communist occasion planners wished to construct one in every main area of Czechoslovakia – ten in all. And most of them had already chosen their websites.

Fortuitously, solely two had been accomplished, and the opposite two, one in Slovakia and one in southern Bohemia, had been below development on the time of the Velvet Revolution, in 1989. Each had been accomplished – with large delays and value overruns – after some bitter battles and large protests from civil society.

In the present day, the identical technocratic constructions, the nuclear foyer and company pursuits that pushed by way of the initiatives within the Nineteen Nineties and the primary decade of the brand new century are selling nuclear energy on the pretext that it may be a part of the answer to the local weather disaster. After all, intellectually this concept has been discredited many occasions and way back, however there has by no means been any rationality within the quest to construct extra nuclear energy crops.

However in fact rational arguments usually are not the strongest level within the present Czech public debate, particularly relating to discussing vitality coverage. The talk on this difficulty is closely influenced by the media with direct hyperlinks to fossil oligarchs, large enterprise and their company constructions.

The Czech oligarch Daniel Křetínský, who invests closely in coal mines, coal and fuel energy crops and different fossil infrastructure, additionally owns media homes and newspapers. He’s the second largest Czech writer after one other oligarch, former prime minister Andrej Babiš, who’s in negotiations to promote his Mafra media home, most likely to a different Czech oligarchic group, however apparently desires to make sure that its editorial coverage will proceed to serve his pursuits earlier than the deal is finalised.

Křetínský controls one of many largest Czech tabloids, Blesk, the influential weekly Reflex and several other radio stations. As well as, one of many greatest liberal magazines, the weekly Respekt, and the every day Hospodářské Noviny, the largest Czech enterprise paper, are owned by former coal-mine proprietor Zdeněk Bakala.

These oligarchs have a robust curiosity in sustaining the established order, which is predicated on giant non-public vitality producers, largely nuclear and coal or fossil fuel energy crops run by Daniel Křetínský’s firm EPH and oligarch Pavel Tykač’s firm Sev.en or the state-owned firm ČEZ. Alternatives for smaller companies and new fashions of vitality manufacturing based mostly on sustainable assets and possession distributed amongst numerous communities and cooperatives are far past the horizon of the Czech political debate on local weather change.

Conservative and tactically over-cautious local weather science

The third leitmotif of the Czech debate is the very particular function performed by Czech local weather specialists. The people who find themselves often given the ground as “specialists” within the media are extra obsessive about not being seen as “too radical” than they’re with precisely presenting the horrifying details concerning the state of the local weather.

They are typically evasive, usually downplaying the hyperlink between excessive climate occasions and local weather disruption. Radim Tolasz, an professional of selection for a lot of the mainstream media, has a popularity for warning extra usually about “local weather extremism” and “inexperienced radicals” than concerning the burning of fossil fuels.

One other often quoted voice is Radan Huth, head of the Local weather Analysis Centre on the Czech Academy of Sciences. He’s an energetic member of the Civic Democratic Celebration (ODS), a right-wing, conservative governing occasion with a protracted custom of local weather denial.

Nonetheless, Huth doesn’t espouse “traditional” local weather denialism. He accepts the existence of artificial international warming, however repeatedly says that present local weather insurance policies can not clear up local weather change and that the answer lies in scientific and technological progress and adaptation to excessive climate situations.

Huth’s arguments within the Czech context, the place fossil-fuel oligarchs management many of the media, principally help the established order based mostly on fossil-fuel consumption. Within the Czech debate on the local weather disaster, there are not any scientists with an applicable angle to the difficulty, resembling Johan Rockström or James Hansen, who name for radical cuts in emissions as quickly as potential and warn towards the fossil gas trade.

A brand new inexperienced class is required

What can the Czech debate on the local weather disaster present within the wider European or international context? If we’re to satisfy our local weather commitments, the Czechs clearly want a vigorous and far-reaching financial transformation, as does the European Union.

However this may by no means occur with out a crucial mass of people that have a vested curiosity within the transformation. It’s inconceivable to have a inexperienced transformation with a fossil oligarchy controlling many of the vitality trade and media homes, and with out clear local weather science, which is precisely the scenario within the Czech Republic.

It additionally exhibits how the a number of crises of social injustice, weakening democracy and ecological devastation are interlinked and can’t be resolved except they’re tackled concurrently. The primary needed step is to take away fossil-fuel pursuits from all negotiations on vitality transition and future vitality coverage. This is without doubt one of the areas the place the European Union is failing miserably to guard the pursuits of its residents.

After all, there are higher traditions in Czech political historical past. In recent times, the Czech local weather motion has seen the emergence of recent initiatives and organisations resembling Re-set or Limity jsme. They promote cooperatives, sustainable vitality methods owned by native communities or municipalities, and work tirelessly for the mandatory transformation to a inexperienced, simply and really democratic society. They’re a small however rising Czech a part of the worldwide motion that may avert the local weather disaster we’re heading for.

The truth that the way in which to a greater future is to construct a motion that resists the pursuits of fossil-fuel firms and oligarchs might hardly be higher studied in every other nation. The Czech Republic is a laboratory wherein we will check what future lies forward. Will it’s run by the exploitative oligarchs and firms heading in direction of authoritarian rule and finally catastrophe, or will it flip in direction of inexperienced, social, participatory democracy?

It appears the time has come for an additional change of political and financial system on the dimensions of the revolutions of 1989. And the amusing factor is that it ought to occur with the identical aspirations as we had then – a simply, inexperienced and really democratic society. We are able to actually draw some hope from the truth that nearly no one noticed the revolutions of 1989 coming only a few years earlier than they occurred.

This text is a part of a collection devoted to local weather discourse within the European media. This venture is organised by the Inexperienced European Basis with the help of the European Parliament, and in collaboration with Voxeurop and the Inexperienced European Journal.