James Cameron condemns Donald Trump's presidency: 'The world is upside-down. These people are insane'

The animosity between Hollywood and Donald Trump is pretty mutual. As you would imagine, the President does not feel warmly to a community where he is one of the most universally hated figures and the target of incalculable award show wisecracks.

James Cameron has become the latest Hollywood figure to condemn the President. The filmmaker, who has directed everything from The Titanic to Avatar, said he was very concerned about Mr Trump’s attitude to climate change.

Cameron suggested a Trump presidency was ultimately pushing us towards the tipping point of climate change. More broadly, the 62-year-old said the world had turned “upside-down” since Mr Trump’s election and expressed his concern about the rhetoric being espoused by the White House.

“It’s basically the upside-down world right now, and the kind of dialogue coming out of these guys sounds like George Orwell,” he told the Daily Beast.

“Alternate facts? There’s no such thing as an alternate fact! These people are insane,” Cameron added, referencing a now infamous phrase used by Mr Trump’s adviser Kellyanne Conway after she was asked to explain why press secretary Sean Spicer made a statement to reporters peppered with inaccuracies.

The acclaimed director, whose activism centres on climate and sustainability, said he was worried about the state of the environment under a Trump presidency.

“Years ago, we sort of spotted the iceberg ahead of us and we called out the order to turn, and we’ve been slowly, slowly, slowly trying to turn this big-ass ship to not hit the iceberg, and then Trump grabbed the tiller and just plunged it right back at the center of the iceberg,” he said.

“So am I worried? Of course. I’m like anyone of good conscience and reasonable intelligence. I think we’re the biggest freakin’ idiot civilisation in history right now, and they’ll probably be talking about us 4,000 years from now scratching their heads - like they talk about Atlantis. Who are those guys? What did they do to piss off the gods so much that they’re buried under a hundred feet of mud right now?”

Cameron said he was concerned about the appointment of Scott Pruitt to the head of the Environmental Protection Agency.

“He nominated a guy to run the EPA [Scott Pruitt] who has eight lawsuits against the EPA, and refuses to recuse himself from those lawsuits! “ claimed Cameron.

Mr Pruitt, who is the Attorney General of the oil and gas-intensive state of Oklahoma, is a climate change sceptic. He has said the debate on climate change is “far from settled” and joined a coalition of state attorney generals in suing the agency’s Clean Power Plan - the key Obama-era policy brought in to try and reduce US greenhouse gas emissions from the oil and gas sector.

On Tuesday, Mr Trump signed an executive order to advance the construction of the $3.8bn (£3bn) Dakota Access Pipeline. Last November the US Army Corps of Engineers denied the permit to build the 1,100-mile pipeline. Protesters fear the pipeline could damage drinking water and desecrate sacred grounds.

Mr Trump, who has dismissed climate change as a “Chinese hoax”, has appointed known climate science deniers to key positions in his administration.