Pacific climate campaigner says Morrison is ‘deaf to science’

Anote Tong, the former president of Kiribati, has accused Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison of “being deaf” to the science of climate change and the threats facing Pacific Islands nations.

Tong said that Morrison, in brushing aside the recent report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and “saying it’s nonsense”, was “irresponsible”.

“Go ahead, worry about your next election. But I think, don’t condemn those people for whom climate change is a serious issue, for whom climate change is an issue of survival,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation in an interview from Los Angeles.