Barnaby Joyce has made a wild claim live on air, to the effect that global warming has been “fixed” as it happened to be bucketing down in regional NSW, where he was being interviewed from.
The interesting claim was then challenged by Sunrise host Nat Barr.
Joyce appeared on the Morning Show from Danglemah, NSW, where it was raining very heavily on the former deputy PM. He was really struggling to keep himself dry.
“Great weather for ducks, trout, worms, and I’m going to get the hell out of here as soon as you are finished,” he said.
However, it was a comment in response to a question about soft plastic recycling that raised Nat Barr’s eyebrows.
“We’ve solved global warming, we’ve solved the drought, we’ve obviously fixed that problem,” Mr Joyce said, looking around at the downpour.
“Not really,” Ms Barr responded.
“Because global warming actually creates rain, but we will talk about that next week.”
Her response was met with a groan from Mr Joyce. She had asked the Nationals MP why Australia had only been recycling 16% of plastics over the past four years.
He replied by insisting you can’t talk about recycling without talking about coal-fired power stations and nuclear energy, saying: “One of the things about it, of course, is (that it) costs money to recycle. Like all manufacturing … requires energy, requires power”.
“If we keep devoiding (sic) our nation of the capacity to produce baseload power, shutting down coal fired power stations, not wanting to talk about nuclear power … then you’re not going to have manufacturing and means you’re not gonna have recycling.
“You just gotta be a realist. Gotta get cheaper energy.”
These comments follow the sensational collapse of Australia’s largest soft plastic recycling scheme, which was revealed last week amid the revelations of secret stockpiling.
Images: The Morning Show
This article first appeared on OverSixty.