Klaus is currently also losing his fight against global warming alarmism and the energy-rationing policies required to reduce greenhouse gas emissions dramatically in the next 40 years. However, he is almost certain to end up on the winning side of the climate debate eventually.

That's not because Klaus is part of a powerful international cabal lavishly funded by Big Oil and King Coal (the reality is that most oil companies support cap-and-trade programmes, such as the EU's Emissions Trading Scheme, and coal's kingdom has been reduced to a principality). In fact, he's one of only three prominent political leaders in the world to oppose global warming alarmism vociferously and persistently — the others being US Senator James Inhofe of Oklahoma and Britain's Lord Lawson. Klaus's position is eventually going to prevail simply because reality is on his side. The wheels are beginning to come off the global warming bandwagon. But until that happens, Klaus is going to be lonely and isolated.

It is no coincidence that Klaus is the only head of state who knows something about climate science and a lot about the economics of cap-and-trade and other energy-rationing policies and is also the only head of a country who is a global warming sceptic. He correctly argues in his 2007 book, Blue Planet in Green Shackles, that the policies proposed to deal with global warming will certainly be much more ruinous than any negative impacts of higher temperatures. 

But as with Lisbon, Klaus is fundamentally opposed to the global warming agenda because "the largest threat to freedom...at the beginning of the 21st century is no longer socialism. It is, instead, the ambitious, arrogant, unscrupulous ideology of environmentalism." No wonder he's unpopular with the chattering class in London and New York.

Perhaps the truest estimate of Klaus's stature comes from an unexpected source. Klaus has made a point of trying to engage Al Gore. The two are invited to speak at many of the same conferences. Klaus always asks to debate Gore. Gore always declines. This may seem odd given that the audiences they speak to are overwhelmingly on Gore's side, but the reason is obvious: Gore has the fantasy, Klaus has the goods. Vaclav Klaus may be underrated by many people who are annoyed by his courageous stands, but he's not underrated by Al Gore.