Jobs trump climate for Shelton
A FAR-RIGHT party hoping to snare a seat in the Senate says it does not promote conspiracy theories – but its candidate has rubbished the science around human-induced climate change.
Australian Conservatives politician Lyle Shelton dug his heels in when asked to explain his opposition to the science around global warming.
“We’re not looking for a Trump or big narcissist,” he said at his party’s Gold Coast campaign launch last Tuesday. “We’re not crazy people with big yellow billboards, red hair, big hats and conspiracy theories. I mean, we are not in the global-warming space. We’re not convinced that humans are causing climate change.
“And yet our whole economy is being driven by this quasi-religion that humans are destroying the planet therefore we’ve got to scale back our economy.”
He contested research from Yale University and journal IOP Science that found 97 per cent of peer-reviewed papers agree, either explicitly or implicitly, that global warming is occurring and caused by humans.
“I don’t think there’s any clear evidence that human emissions of carbon dioxide are driving global warming,” he said. “I’m just not convinced that we should restructure, decarbonise and de-industrialise our economy on the basis of this. Both major parties are driving our country off an economic cliff, potentially.”
Mr Shelton – who said the Coalition “can’t come up with a coherent position on global warming” – believes thousands of jobs will go if Australia acts to reduce emissions.