Tony Abbott doesn’t take climate science seriously and the repeal of the carbon price is “reckless” and “deeply shaming”, according to a former UK Conservative party environment minister.
Lord Deben, who served in Margaret Thatcher’s government as John Gummer, told Guardian Australia the Australian government was out of step with centre-right politicians from around the world on the urgency of tackling climate change.
“I haven’t met an Australian who is not deeply ashamed of this government, most of whom voted for Abbott,” he said. “How can you say ‘we don’t mind what 97% of scientists tell us, we are going to stick two fingers up and do it anyway’?
“Conservatives around the world are taking action on climate change, including Britain and Germany. It’s in the DNA of conservatives to hand on a better world to your children and I hate that Australia is letting down conservatives around the world.”
Deben said he met Abbott last year, when the prime minister was opposition leader, to gauge his position in climate change.
“Quite clearly, he was someone who refuses to accept the science of climate change,” said Deben, who is chairman of the UK’s Committee on Climate Change. “He referred to ideas put forward by a small number of people whose views aren’t accepted by any serious scientist in the world.
“I think future generations will ask ‘what did you do to stop the world being overwhelmed by climate change?’. Mr Abbott will have to answer that and I don’t know how he can look at children in the eye. His attitude, if everyone else did the same, would condemn the poorest people in the world to an impossible life.
“I don’t think conservatives have ever taken that view before. Australia, as a great country, knows better than that, I think.”
Deben, who was UK environment secretary from 1993 to 1997, said the upcoming repeal of Australia’s carbon price was “deeply shaming”.
“It’s a reckless and deeply retrograde step,” he said. “There has been a notable reduction in emissions and businesses have not found it to be the imposition that they said it would be.
“There’s nothing in the [Coalition’s] alternative policy that makes anyone believe they will hit the target of 5% reduction in emissions by 2020, which is manifestly inadequate anyway.
“I mean, when you’ve even got small, poor countries such as Kiribati and Micronesia doing their part to reduce emissions, what on Earth is Australia doing?”
Abbott has stressed that he accepts the science and wants to tackle climate change, but not “clobber” the economy while doing so. Abbott’s office has been contacted for a response to Deben’s comments.
The Coalition has argued that the carbon price has been a costly imposition on the Australian economy, reducing emissions by just 0.1% in the two years of its operation.
Supporters of carbon pricing, however, point out that emissions from electricity generation, which is the main target of the mechanism, have dropped by 11% in this time.
Bodies such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have backed carbon pricing as the most economically efficient way of reducing emissions.
A spokeswoman for Ed Davey, the UK’s climate change minister, told Guardian Australia that Britain was committed to the Europe-wide emissions trading scheme.
“We will continue to work with Australia on achieving an ambitious global agreement in 2015,” she said. “The UK supports the development of carbon pricing around the world as the most cost-effective way to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and incentivising the technologies required for the transition to a low carbon economy.”
The Coalition wants to replace carbon pricing with its Direct Action policy, a voluntary fund that will pay businesses that wish to reduce their emissions.
The government insists Direct Action will meet the 5% emissions target, although several independent analyses have cast doubt on this and the Department of Environment has admitted it has no modelling to prove the scheme will meet the goal.
It’s uncertain whether the new senate will vote for Direct Action, due to opposition from Labor, the Greens and Palmer United party. Coalition attempts to scrap the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Renewable Energy Agency, the two main renewable energy agencies, could also be thwarted in the Senate.