Prof. RNDr., CSc. Bedřich Moldan

“At the countryside… The communists had completely destroyed it; doing so in two ways. First of all, by driving out the elites. They had never returned and never will, so this is a done deal. At present, it is impossible to return the countryside to a reasonable state because the people are missing and will never come back. On the other hand, terrible things started happening there. Plowing up groves, soil amelioration, straightening of rivers, digging of canals. Up until today in Moravia, you can find irrigation canals or their remainders, which are long out of use. All in all, there was widespread destruction. At the same time, heavy industry was either in the making or already in operation, without any filtering. Power plants, steel mills, chemical plants… Bílina was a river that turned all kinds of colors at that time, becoming more or less toxic. It had escalated over time. In the 1960s and early 1970s all of this had become visible and effective.”

“I managed one thing; that was even before the establishment of the Environmental Section. In March, the Limits to Growth was published. A truly essential book, which offered a completely new perspective of the economic system. It was really a breakthrough. Back then, I worked in the Geological Institute and as such was travelling a lot – that’s due to the nature of the science of geology. I had a friend there who was just about to travel to England. Having my contacts and information, I told him: ‘Dear Joel, since you’re going to London, get me one of those books.’ And he really did. It was published in March and in April, I got hold of it, which was a really good thing. In the course of the summer at my cottage I managed to translate all of it into Czech. In October, we had 400 prints, which we spread around the country. So, it had quite and impact. Jiřina Šiklová was recalling the other day Miloš Zeman bringing it somewhere and claiming he was the one who translated it.”