Will Geert Wilders’ PVV draw new Dutch coalition into climate sceptic camp?

Labor party's former Greenpeace activist Diederik Samsom recently interviewed versus PVV's vocal climate sceptic Richard de Mos

The openly climate sceptic Dutch Freedom Party PVV jumped from 9 to 24 seats in parliament in Wednesdays elections. Since it’s split of from the VVD in 2005 the PVV has been most notorious for its tough stand against rising Islamism and malfunctioning immigration. Since late 2009 the party has also become very vocal about their climate skepticism. There is a reasonable chance that the PVV will be part of the new coalition.

Climate hysteria
The PVV entered the Dutch political arena in 2006 when the former liberal conservative Geert Wilders was expelled from the VVD for his outright rejection of Turkey ever joining the EU. Immigration and health care reform were the only area’s in which they had true political ambitions. Nonetheless from time to time Geert Wilders bluntly criticized the other parties climate hysteria. Climate policy he refers to as “a leftist hobby of the elite”.

In September 2009 Richard the Mos replaced Barry Madlener, who took office in Brussels for the PVV, in the Dutch parliament. Even before the climategate scandal broke De Mos started openly voicing his parties climate skepticism. He garnered around him a loosely knit voluntary group of experts on climatology and meteorology who never hesitated to help his party further develop their viewpoints on climate and the environment. After some weak debating performances at the start, slowly but surely he became more effective in scrutinizing the climate ambitions of Prime Minister Balkenende’s 4th coalition.

Blundering IPCC
A recent interview with Climategate.nl quotes De Mos saying: “Since I am not a scientist, it was fantastic to get all this support from the Dutch sceptic community. Surely I have been very lucky. I have been riding the wave of the climategate scandal, the flop of Kopenhagen, the harsh winter and the revelations about the blundering UN climate panel IPCC. After a while the liberal conservatives started joining my criticism, but because of their strong green conservative wing they remain complacent about the climate change hoax.”

Winner Mark Rutte
After a night in which the race between labor party PvdA and conservatives VVD was too close to call for many hours, the conservatives came out victorious. This has all but eradicated the likelihood of a purple coalition in which the Dutch green-left party wished to be the “green heart” putting the Netherlands on an even “greener” track than the new British government is.

Given PVV leader Geert Wilders’ recent tone and VVD election winner Mark Rutte’s wish to build a coalition within three weeks, chances are The Netherlands will be ruled by a right wing coalition of VVD, PVV and CDA. The Christian democratic CDA was almost halved in the elections, leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Balkenende as party leader.

True care about the environment
The climate sceptic MP Richard de Mos has told Climategate that he will probably not be part of coalition negotiations. This leaves the possibility that the PVV will only try to score on immigration and health care and that they would compromise climate change. However Richard the Mos told Climategate.nl that he would surely do everything in his power to make a stand about the environmental proposals of his party, which are in short: abolish climate policy all together since there is no climate problem and CO2 is highly beneficial to plants; take energy policy completely out of the environmental arena and let it resort purely under the Ministry of Economics; let the Environment Ministry focus again on true environmental problems without hyping them again with high penalties for environmental offenders; as well as stopping environmental indoctrination of children in schools and replacing it with old-fashioned biology classes teaching kids love of nature, knowledge about plants, animals and ecosystems, and a true care about the environment.

Gepubliceerd in het Engels vanwege internationale belangstelling.