This article is more than 6 years old

This article is more than 6 years old

The recently fired British environment minister, Owen Paterson, has praised Tony Abbott for confronting the “powerful, self-serving caucus” of green groups.



Paterson – who was removed from cabinet last week by the UK prime minister, David Cameron – labelled conservation groups “the green blob” and said they were “highly paid globetrotters” who besieged him with demands while he was the environment secretary.



In an article for the UK newspaper the Sunday Telegraph, Paterson said Abbott and the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, had demonstrated how to take on these groups.



“Like the nationalised industries and obstructive trade unions of the 1970s, the green blob has become a powerful, self-serving caucus; it is the job of the elected politician to stand up to them,” Paterson said.



“We must have the courage to tackle it head-on, as Tony Abbott in Australia and Stephen Harper in Canada have done, or the economy and the environment will both continue to suffer.”



Green groups criticised Paterson for his handling of the extensive flooding of Somerset earlier this year. He also oversaw a controversial cull of badgers, saying the “badgers are moving the goal posts” when the plan failed to meet its objectives.



George Monbiot recently called Paterson "the worst environment secretary this country has ever suffered".

In his Sunday Telegraph article, Paterson said Greenpeace burned an effigy of him and that he received death threats. He said a coalition of pressure groups and renewable energy advocates pushed “self-serving” agendas in order to gain grants.



“This tangled triangle of unelected busybodies claims to have the interests of the planet and the countryside at heart, but it is increasingly clear that it is focusing on the wrong issues and doing real harm while profiting handsomely,” he wrote.



Paterson said the theory the UK floods were linked to climate change was “popular and false”, echoing similar comments made by Abbott last year when asked about the link between bushfires and a warming planet.



But while Paterson has continued to question the science of climate change – last year he said “we should just accept that the climate has been changing for centuries” – Abbott has recently been at pains to stress he accepted the mainstream view of scientists.



Asked last week about his previous depiction of climate scientists as alarmists, Abbott told the ABC that “on either side of most arguments some people go a little over the top”.



“My position is that climate change is real, humanity does make a contribution and it's important to have strong and effective policies to deal with it and that's exactly what the Coalition's Direct Action policy is,” he said.



The government is looking to bring in Direct Action – which would provide $2.55bn in funding for carbon abatement – to replace the carbon price, which was abolished last week.