Climate change science a ‘cult’, says former prime minister Tony Abbott

In his most damning comments since declaring climate change science was ‘absolute crap’ in 2009, Tony Abbott has unleashed on the government’s renewable energy targets in a speech in London.

Former prime minister Tony Abbott: ‘The climate cult will eventually be discredited; I just hope we don’t have to endure energy catas­trophe, before that happens’. Picture: Getty Images

Former prime minister Tony Abbott has slammed the government’s plan for net-zero carbon dioxide emissions by 2050 as “not just utterly irrational but actually impossible”, in his most critical comments on climate policy since declaring climate change science was “absolute crap” in 2009.

Speaking at the launch of an Institute of Public Affairs report on Australian energy security, Mr Abbott predicted Australia would not meet any of the Albanese government’s legislative targets for renewable energy supply recently enshrined in legislation, for both scientific and political reasons.

“The climate cult will eventually be discredited; I just hope we don’t have to endure energy catas­trophe, before that happens,” he told an audience in ­London on the sidelines of the inaugural Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference.

Launching a report by engineer and economist Stephen Wilson entitled Energy Security is National Security, Mr Abbott said Australian voters had and would continue to put their economic wellbeing ahead of demands to slash emissions in line with government plans to lift renewable energy to 82 per cent of national supply by 2030.

“The anthropogenic global warming thesis, at least in its more extreme forms, is both ahistorical and utterly implausible,” he said, arguing periods of significant climate change throughout history, including the Roman warm period and the Medieval warm period followed by the ­Little Age, had nothing to do with human activity.

Mr Abbott led the federal ­Coalition to power in 2013 on a promise to reverse Labor’s emissions trading scheme, which has not be reintroduced since.

The former Liberal Party leader and prime minster until 2015 also decried how Australia exported large quantities of coal, gas and uranium, but was reluctant to use them for its own domestic ­energy needs.

“My country should be an energy superpower, not a green energy superpower, but an energy superpower,” he told the supportive audience, including senator Matthew Canavan.

Last year, the government legislated to reduce Australia’s net-greenhouse gas emissions to zero by 2050, without recourse to nuclear power, including a reduction in emissions by 43 per cent from 2005 levels by 2030, in line with internationally agreed plans.

More than 150 countries have committed to net zero by 2050, including almost all major economies and the majority of Australia’s trading partners, the government said in May, as it legislated to create a National Net Zero Authority to co-ordinate the shift to majority renewable power.

Mr Abbott said the infrastructure requirements to meet Labor’s 2030 targets were unrealistic, requiring “in the words of the incoming Energy Minister, the construction of 22,000 solar panels every day, and the erection of 14 large wind turbines every month for eight years, plus the construction of up to 10,000km of new transmission lines”.

The ARC conference featured speakers who similarly criticised the likelihood and desirability of moving towards net zero emissions by 2050, including from Barack Obama’s former undersecretary for science, Professor Steven Koonin, who denied there was a “climate emergency”.

“There is scant support for the notion of a climate catastrophe, climate emergency … we need to cancel the climate crisis,” he said.

“The notion of an emerging energy revolution is just an oxymoron if you try and push things too fast,” he added.