This is risk management on a global scale. In the national interest, emergency action is long overdue, for climate change is a category of risk, and an opportunity, unlike anything humanity has previously experienced. An existential threat which, to avoid the worst impacts, requires climate change solutions to be factored into every government policy. Growth will not come from maintenance of the status quo, but from a rapid transition to a low-carbon economy. The longer the delay, the less chance of making that transition in good order.

The omens are not good. The federal government remains in total denial that climate change will have any material impact on Australia's future, Sensible climate policy has been dismantled, replaced with token gestures. Climate change does not feature in the policy reviews underway, with ludicrously Orwellian efforts being made to remove any reference to it throughout government. Every encouragement is given to new high-carbon investment, coal in the Galilee Basin and Liverpool Plains, coal seam gas in NSW and Queensland, LNG exports generally, when it is clear that, to have a reasonable chance of staying out of big trouble, we have no carbon budget left today.

The finance and business community are little better. There is much rhetoric but minimal real action. The level of understanding among top level executives of the risks and opportunities posed by climate change is abysmal, in itself a breach of their fiduciary responsibilities. Not a single leader of a major company has spoken out against the federal government's blatant climate denialism and dismantling of sensible climate policy. Industry bodies such as the Minerals Council and Business Council continue spreading deceptive and misleading information to downplay the issue and undermine sensible policy development.

Even corporations and investment managers who profess leadership are unable to think much beyond incremental change from "business-as-usual". Particularly the all-powerful fossil-fuel industry, with its continuing mantra that "fossil-fuels will be a major component of the energy mix for decades to come, and are essential to alleviate poverty". Their projections imply carbon emissions over the next 20 years will be around 70 per cent of all emissions since the Industrial Revolution began in 1750. The only solutions offered are hardy perennials such as carbon capture and storage which repeated efforts have demonstrated will never work at the massive scale now required. To initiate such expansion in the absence of realistic solutions, with current scientific knowledge and with no carbon budget, is nothing short of a crime against humanity. Poverty, far from being alleviated, would accelerate. Further fossil-fuel development simply has to stop now, with redoubled effort focused on low-carbon alternatives.

The transition will not be easy. However, Australia is well-placed to prosper in this new world with top quality renewable resources, and the expertise to develop them. But this requires policies which encourage science, innovation and rapid action, diametrically the opposite of the government's ideological anti-science agenda that has decimated science funding at a time when it has never been more important.