Australia’s former prime minister thinks President-elect Donald Trump’s recent election victory will allow Americans to see global warming from a “better perspective” and a rebuke of imposing “socialism in the name of misguided environmentalism.”
“One of the encouraging things about the election of Trump is that we should finally be able to see this issue in better perspective,” former Prime Minister Tony Abbott told Sky News Wednesday, according to The Guardian.
“It is significant, we should take reasonable steps to limit our emissions,” Abbott said, adding, “but the last thing we should do is impose socialism in the name of misguided environmentalism, and that has been the risk for a very long time.”
Abbott, the former Liberal Party leader, said man-made global warming is an issue, but not the biggest one facing Australia or the planet. Trump’s victory would put some perspective on the issue of global warming, he said.
Trump calls global warming a “hoax” perpetuated by the Chinese to hurt U.S. companies, and pledges to pull out of the United Nations Paris climate agreement. Trump also wants to drill for more oil and help the floundering coal industry.
Environmentalists label Trump a “climate denier” for promising to toss out federal climate regulations, but Abbott said activists need to chill out when it comes to the climate.
“Yes it is an issue, but the moral panic about this has been completely over the top,” Abbott said.
Abbott won a landslide election in 2013 largely on a platform to repeal Australia’s carbon tax that was raising people’s’ energy bills. Abbott said a carbon tax was “socialism masquerading as environmentalism.”
Aussie lawmakers repealed the tax in 2014, but Abbott was forced out of office in a 2015 inner-party political coup.
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