Beam me to Planet Gore !
Posted on 05/27/2009 5:29:23 PM PDT by Cincinna
President Nicolas Sarkozy's desire to appoint an outspoken climate-change sceptic to a new French super-ministry of industry and innovation has drawn strong protests from party colleagues and environmentalists.
Claude Allègre argues that global warming is not necessarily caused by human activity. Putting him in charge of scientific research would be tantamount to "giving the finger to scientists", said Nicolas Hulot, France's best-known environmental activist.
Mr Sarkozy wants to bring Mr Allègre, 72, a freethinking, former socialist education minister, into the government in a reshuffle after next month's European parliamentary elections. The president appears to reckon that appointing someone from outside his own centre-right party will help to counter perceptions that he is a polarising, sectarian leader who decides everything himself. Several portfolios are already held by figures from the left and centre.
"snip"One critic said that associating Mr Allègre with the government's ambitious environmental policy was like putting "organic farming alongside Chernobyl".
Mr Sarkozy is said to value Mr Allègre's experience, his plain speaking and his convictions on the need to free up the economy and shake up the public sector - particularly the university research establishment.
The president's allies rode to Mr Allègre's defence yesterday. Xavier Bertrand, the general secretary of the ruling UMP party, paid tribute to his qualities as a "reformer", saying Mr Allègre had "an interesting profile in French political life".
Mr Allègre hit back at his critics and their "lies and distortions" about his record and beliefs. The climate was certainly changing, he said, but not all the reasons for it were known. "As a scientist and citizen, I, unlike others, do not want environmentalism to accentuate the crisis or make the least well-off suffer more," he said.
(Excerpt) Read more at ft.com ...
Can we make all global warming alarmist wear clown suits?
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This story has an interesting political twist. Once again, Sarko has taken a popular, well respected figure on the Left who has been insulted, ridiculed, and besmerched by the Socialist Party, and given him a non controversial, non ideological position in his government. He is systematically using a seek and destroy operation against his opposition on the Left.
Lessons to be learned here.
yitbos
Sarkozy liked the authority of the EU Presidency when he had it. Now, perhaps he is a little more realistic that the EUrotopian economy is down the tubes in no small part because of the whacked out enviro policies that any idiot can see.
yitbos
Thanks Cincinna.
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