What now, after two scorching weeks that have set the nation ablaze and delivered warnings of catastrophe so regular they have begun to seem monotonous? Could it be a turning point in Australia’s political logic on climate change; the episode that turned climate denialism (or at least agnosticism) from a political asset into a liability? The moment when those debates about the cost of action seemed rather less urgent in the searing face of the cost of inaction?

A building burns on Greys Road, Failford on the Mid North Coast. Credit:Nick Moir

That people are now prepared to talk climate change in the midst of a fire emergency tells you that some kind of threshold has been reached. At least something is up when politicians – from both major parties – spend considerable energy telling you not to discuss something, and the public debate carries on anyway. At that point, such pleas sound more like desperation than authority.

But there’s a long way to go here, because the problem in Australia is that climate politics is no longer a simple contest between believers and deniers. It’s not even a contest between those who want action and those who don’t. Perhaps the greatest trick of all this has been pulled by those who support the idea of climate action but oppose every particular version of it.

Take the Business Council of Australia, which supported some kind of carbon pricing mechanism for over a decade, but opposed both Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard’s policies for doing just that, and celebrated the death of the carbon tax. The Coalition does something similar: officially accepting the reality of climate change and establishing funds to respond to it, while being perfectly happy to preside over Australia’s rising emissions and flirt with expanding our coal-fired power. Meanwhile, Labor has been so scarred by its adventures in pricing carbon that it has now resorted to spruiking, say, renewable energy targets rather than offering a detailed policy on how exactly reduced emissions are to be achieved.