Former Australian prime minister Tony Abbott appeared in London overnight at a Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) event, where he gave a rousing speech that compared climate change to volcano gods, and suggested that global warming was a good thing because fewer people would die from cold snaps.
The GWPF bills itself as “open-minded on the contested science of global warming but “deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated”.
Say what you like about Abbott, but he sure knows how to play to his audience. While media outlets were forbidden from attending the lecture, Abbott was kind enough to post a full transcript of the speech on his Twitter account.
“The theory must fit the facts,” Abbott wrote as he posted the link to the speech.
“Environmentalism has managed to combine a post-socialist instinct for big government with a post-Christian nostalgia for making sacrifices in a good cause,” Abbott’s speech reads. “Primitive people once killed goats to appease the volcano gods. We’re more sophisticated now but are still sacrificing our industries and our living standards to the climate gods to little more effect.”
Abbott also stated that, “In most countries, far more people die in cold snaps than in heat waves, so a gradual lift in global temperatures, especially if it’s accompanied by more prosperity and more capacity to adapt to change, might even be beneficial.”
Abbott isn’t the first Australian politician to come out as a global warming skeptic; he’s not even the first former prime minister. In 2011, John Howard delivered his own lecture at the GWPF and declared that “most people in countries like ours have settled into a state of sustained agnosticism on the issue”.
Greens Senator Peter Whish-Wilson, one of many Australian politicians who disagreed with the remarks, responded to Abbott’s Twitter post.
“Mate, your [sic] an embarrassment. Seriously, it’s time to move on, retire, resign. You’ve been in politics too long. It’s not about you anymore,” Whish-Wilson wrote.
You can read Abbott’s full speech here.