Even for a sympathetic observer from the UK, the politics of climate change in Australia is, to say the least, vexatious. But it’s now entering a more critical phase than ever before. The mismatch between the conclusions of the Paris agreement in December last year and the failure of Australia’s political establishment to understand what’s going on “out there in the rest of the world” is putting Australia’s entire economy at risk.

When the prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, wrested the prime ministership from Tony Abbott in September last year, the international climate community breathed a deep sigh of relief. With the former Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, Abbott was seen as the most egregiously pig-headed climate-change denier in western world had ever thrown up. By contrast, Turnbull had done OK on climate change as a previous leader of the Liberal party, so it was assumed he would do a lot better second time round.

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Nothing could be further from the truth. As I discovered on my latest visit, Turnbull has been utterly pusillanimous in pursuing any kind of progressive climate agenda. As part of his “oil on troubled waters” strategy, he apparently decided not to take on Abbott’s climate-denying guerilla fighters, and has offered zero leadership to Australia’s confused and polarised citizenry either before or after Paris.

For instance, he stood idly by as Australia’s world-renowned science agency, the CSIRO, announced it would cut 80% of its climate scientists, effectively ending Australia’s climate research program.

No surprise then that the New South Wales Liberals recently passed a motion, with the support of more than 70% of delegates, calling on the federal government to hold public debates between scientists from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and independent climate scientists. Basically, they are still refusing to accept that the science of climate change is settled, and are fighting an obstinate rearguard action to keep mining and burning as much coal and gas as possible.

You can see why Turnbull might be a bit nervous about confronting such a monumentally ignorant faction in his party. And he may even be reassured that such deniers still hang on elsewhere in the world. There are, after all, still more than 100 Conservative MPs in the UK who do not subscribe to today’s consensus around the science of climate change. And a recent survey conducted by the Center for American Progress found there are still 144 climate-change deniers in the House of Representatives and 38 in the Senate. That means more than six in 10 US citizens are represented by people who think that climate change is a hoax perpetrated either by communists or doped-up greenies.

And that’s before we even start on the horror story that is Donald Trump. My favourite tweet from Trump the Denier is this: “The concept of global warming was created by and for the Chinese in order to make US manufacturing non–competitive.” Just how many conspiracy theories can one person pack into just one tweet?

So Turnbull is not the only politician having to deal with totally unreasonable flat-earthers. But that’s no excuse. Has he bothered to work out what the real implications of the Paris Agreement look like for Australia?

What he needs to know is that it’s all so much worse (and moving so much faster) than anyone imagined even five years ago. Instead of having decades to do what needs to be done to set the global economy on a genuinely low-carbon trajectory (as in net zero emissions by 2050, which is what Turnbull’s government signed up to in Paris), we now have little more than a decade.

Australia is uniquely vulnerable in this respect. The damage that will be done to the Australian economy as the world decarbonises at speed, leaving billions of dollars stranded in fossil-fuel assets that can no longer be developed, is almost impossible to imagine. And to rub salt into that already inflamed wound, there are few countries that will suffer more from rising average temperatures (as in forest fires, increasingly inhospitable cities, and drought-devastated rural economies) and rising sea levels.

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I’m in Australia every year for the Prince of Wales’ business and sustainability program, and I know only too well that this kind of apocalyptic stuff simply doesn’t do it for most Aussies. So now let’s turn it all on its head – as in enabling Turnbull to stiffen his flaccid sinews and seize this whole low-carbon agenda as the massive opportunity it is. For, as it happens, not only is Australia uniquely vulnerable to the consequences of runaway climate change, it’s also extraordinarily well-placed to navigate its way through to the kind of ultra-low-carbon prosperity on which the destiny of all nations now depends.

In January a blockbuster report from the International Renewable Energy Agency (Irena) identified Australia as one of the most significant beneficiaries of this kind of accelerated shift to renewables by 2030, providing significant gains in GDP (up 1.7%) and employment, as well as socioeconomic and other environmental benefits.

As an accompanying article in the Singapore-based Eco-Business newsletter put it: “The study also found that a shift to renewable power could cut water use by more than a quarter in Australia. This is because solar and wind generation uses up to 200 times less water than natural gas or coal.”

For those aforementioned NSW Liberals: “This would be an important development for Australia, which is experiencing a long-term drought in many parts of the country.”

So my suggestions last week to a group of senior business people convened by the NSW Office of Environment and Heritage could not have been simpler: Get on the right page, Mr Turnbull.

You’ll achieve nothing by seeking to placate those whose minds are permanently closed, who think the science of climate change is something you either “believe in” or not, and whose self-interest (as in their links to Australia’s fossil-fuel and extractive industries) is so palpably prominent. Australia’s citizens deserve a lot better than that.