YOU could almost cut the hubris with a knife in Canberra, when the carbon tax legislation was passed as expected in the lower house.

Gloating Greens and Getup apparatchiks were thick on the ground.

"Today was a big day for the planet," tweeted Greens MP Adam Bandt, ridiculously.

Bandt and turncoat independent Tony Windsor stood at the doors to the chamber after the vote, basking in the attention as Labor MPs streamed out, all smiles and backslaps and hugs.

Greens leader Bob Brown was cockahoop even before the vote, telling everyone who would listen that Australia has the Greens to thank for the troubled legislation.

"The Greens and Christine Milne not least can take a great deal of credit. If we weren't here we wouldn't be a nation moving ahead."

Brown went on to list the usual climate scares: a "wrecked Great Barrier Reef and Murray-Darling Basin", "no ski fields left by the middle of the century" and 700,000 coastal properties doomed.

Of course he never explains that a carbon tax in Australia will make zero difference to the climate.

But his chutzpah knows no bounds. Even as protesters were being thrown out of the public gallery, Brown claimed that Australia "in the main" wants the carbon tax, when polls show that support for a carbon tax collapsed this year.

The latest Newspoll even found that climate change slipped to last place of the ten most important issues in the minds of Australians.

And for the first time, voters judge the Coalition better able to handle climate change, 31 per cent to 28 per cent.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of the carbon tax.

Brown also singled out the independents as "sterling parliamentarians".

The so-called independent MPs Windsor and Rob Oakeshott might have been basking in the praise of Labor and Greens MPs after the carbon tax squeaked through, thanks to their votes.

But back in their conservative electorates, the reaction is quite different.

A mail-in survey wheeled on trolleys into Parliament House by Nationals MP John Williams yesterday has found that 89 per cent of respondents in New England and 87 per cent in Lyne wanted their MPs to vote against the carbon tax.

But judging by the happy look on the independents' faces yesterday, they only care about Canberra.

Originally published as Climate of green fear awaits us