REUTERS/David Gray
He's a pretty controversial guy.
Among the contenders for his most extreme viewpoint is his belief that
The full quote, according to a report in the Pyrenes Advocate in the country's southeast, was the following:
The argument is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty percent of people believe
In his acceptance speech just a few moments ago, he named scrapping Australia's carbon tax as the very first thing he hopes to accomplish in the next three years.
But if 80 percent of Australians do believe in climate change, how can he just ignore it?
Well, Abbott does have a plan of sorts to reduce emissions.
It's called Direct Action, and it's supposed to provide $3 billion in grants and subsidies to encourage energy efficiency. There's also an initiative to sell captured carbon to farmers to increase crop yield.
But most scientists don't see the plan as a viable way for reducing emissions, and Abbott has said he will cap the program's budget regardless of whether it gets the country to its bipartisan goal of reducing overall emissions by 5% by 2020.
He also plans to shut down the government's Clean Energy Finance Corporation, which cost $10 billion.
Australia is actually one of the few countries to have a formal Department of Climate Change (created in 2007).
But given all this, it's hard to see where they'll fit in to an Abbott administration.