Prime Minister Tony Abbott has been told to “change or get out of the way” and labelled as a “straight-out climate denier” by former US vice president Al Gore.

Mr Gore said, “Australia wants to have the kind of sensible policies that the rest of the world is moving toward, in an interview with Vice.

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“I think we’re not far from a point where people will look back on climate denialists as extremely odd, self destructive.”

Mr Gore said the Australian prime minister’s direct action plan — an alternative to a carbon tax that promises to penalise major polluters who exceed a baseline pollution level as well as provide a funding pool to pay companies and farmers to reduce emissions — was “silly” and had “never worked anywhere”.

The star of An Inconvenient Truth instead praised Palmer United Party leader and mining magnate Clive Palmer, who has backed a carbon emissions trading scheme, for putting forward a plan that was “so much better” — but only if Australia’s main trading partners adopt a similar mechanism.

Mr Gore conceded Mr Palmer “does have an unusual style” but that “deep down there’s absolutely no question in my mind that he has a sense of social justice, he has a keen sense of right and wrong … he wants to make the world a better place.”