Of course the climate changes, politician says, but idea that humanity is contributing to it is ‘farcical and fanciful’

The Liberal senator Ian Macdonald has said children are being “brainwashed” by education campaigns urging Australians to take action on climate change, describing the political debate about how to tackle it as “puerile”.

“The children of Australia have been brainwashed into thinking if you turn off a light in Australia, somehow that is going to stop climate change,” the Queensland senator told parliament on Wednesday.



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“This is a puerile debate in its extreme. We have to bring some sense into the debate.”



Because Australia emits less than 1.2% of the world’s carbon, considering an emissions trading scheme was “nonsensical,” he said, adding that “few serious countries” outside of the EU were implementing such schemes.



The Australian Bureau of Statistics places the country’s emissions as closer to 1.5%. According to the Climate Institute, Australia is the largest per capita emitter in the industrialised world.



Macdonald said he did not deny the climate was changing. “As I repeatedly say, Australia was once covered in ice,” he said. “Of course the climate changes.”

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But he challenged the theory that humans were contributing to this. “This new theory, I refer to it often as a fad or a farce or a hoax, that suddenly since man started the industrial age, a change of climate has happened is just farcical and fanciful.”

He added that “stupid proposals” for a carbon tax would lead to jobs being sent offshore, accusing the Greens of “denigrating and belittling” people with alternative views.

Macdonald has frequently questioned taking action of climate change before other countries moved to do the same, and in 2013 said too many research grants were being allocated towards climate research.