‘Wake-up call’ for climate-sceptic Czechs as
blaze devastates national park
Sentiment is shifting among politicians and public as
beloved region of forested mountains goes up in flames
Robert Tait
Prague
Sat 30 Jul
2022 12.00 BST
As wake-up
calls go, this one had the distinction of early morning pungency. If the Czech
Republic is to complete the journey from deep climate change scepticism to full
recognition of the global heating crisis, history may record that the common
experience of awakening to a pervading burning smell marked a turning point.
This was
the sensation that greeted inhabitants of Prague and other towns and cities last
Monday morning as smoke from a blaze that had broken out the previous day in
Bohemian Switzerland, a storied forested area close to the German border,
wafted across the country and seeped into the popular consciousness.
In scenes
that Czechs previously associated with Hollywood disaster films or news footage
from more southern climes, more than 400 firefighters spent the rest of the
week trying to extinguish flames that spread over 1,200 hectares of the popular
national park area, which was used as a location for the Chronicles of Narnia
films.
Hundreds of
people were evacuated as emergency services scrambled – eventually successfully
– to preserve the Pravčická Brana archway, one of Europe’s most striking rock
formations. The border crossing into Germany in the nearby village of Hřensko
was closed.
Declaring
it the worst forest fire in the nation’s history, the Czech authorities
requested help from other countries. Two extinguisher planes from Sweden
arrived on Friday to replace Italian aircraft that had to be redeployed to
Italy to tackle forest fires there; Slovakia sent 30 military personnel along
with a UH-60M Blackhawk helicopter adapted to fight fires.
The
overstretched fire service advised people to close their windows, and pointedly
requested them not to call emergency lines unless they saw signs of fire in
their locality. The appeal reflected the fact that reports of smoke were being
received in Prague, 60 miles to the south, and as far away as Pardubice, more
than 120 miles away.
“It was
literally a wake-up call, or a wake-up smell, for many people,” said Petr
Kutilek, a political scientist and member of the Czech Green party, reflecting
a belief that the event could propel climate change to the top of the country’s
political agenda.
Police are
investigating suspicions that the fire was sparked by human negligence. But its
rapid spread at a time of record-high temperatures, and similar blazes
elsewhere in Europe and beyond, has increased acceptance that the emergency is
real even in circles that were once hotbeds of denial.
Petr Fiala,
the Czech prime minister – whose Civic Democrat (ODS) party has long been
considered climate-sceptic – told the Prima TV channel after visiting the scene
that he would “have to wear blinkers and not think rationally … if I did not
see that the climate is changing in a certain way and that the whole of Europe
is facing fires caused by unusually high temperatures”.
That view
was a far cry from the hardline climate change denialism of the former Czech
prime minister and president Václav Klaus – a co-founder of Fiala’s party – who
branded global warming “bogus” and called campaigners against it “a threat to
freedom and economic growth”.
Other
weather-related encounters in the Czech Republic have fuelled a shift in
sentiment – particularly a deadly tornado that struck several villages in the
south Moravia region last summer, killing six and injuring hundreds more.
Even before
that, a survey conducted for Czech Radio found that 93% of Czechs accepted that
climate change existed, with 86% expecting it to change the world. But in a
striking contradiction, only 39% expected it to affect them personally.
Such
lingering scepticism raises questions over the political will to embrace
mitigating policies – doubts crystallised last month when the Czech environment
minister, Anna Hubáčková, declared that cars with internal combustion engines
would continue to be sold after 2035, despite an EU directive banning them in
line with the bloc’s Green Deal climate package.
“The
current cabinet has upheld some of the key legislation that in the long-term
favours the Czech energy conglomerates benefiting from the current energy mix,”
said Albin Sybera, a Czech political analyst. “There’s a reluctance to clash with
the powerful lobby that has kept that mix together – and which could be undone
by a greater share of renewables, for example. That’s why the main parties in
the ruling coalition are reluctant to recognise the urgency to act – even in
the face of a devastating fire that has destroyed swathes of the country’s most
remarkable national park.”
This
caution has a historical irony. Officially tolerated environmental activism
under the communist dictatorship of the former Czechoslovakia is credited with
having helped trigger the 1989 velvet revolution. The regime was swept from
power amid a rising outcry over pollution and acid rain produced by state-run
heavy industriy, which in turn destroyed much of the country’s forests.
“The
visible damage to the environment disappeared in the 1990s thanks to those
state industries going bankrupt, to new technology, and also to EU regulation,”
said Kutilek. “The country has been busy since then trying to catch up
economically with western Europe and the environment felt fine – right up until
the past couple of years, when the effects of climate change began to feel
obvious.”
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