The debate around climate change in Australia has turned into a circus over the years, and all because of one thing: money, writes Ian Verrender.

"The world's climate scientists have provided us with a clear message - that the balance of evidence suggests humans are having a discernible influence on global climate."

As the Senate shimmies and shakes to Clive Palmer's bizarre dance routine around the carbon tax, and with the Federal Government looking increasingly desperate to deliver on a major election plank, it is worth harking back to these words, uttered by an eminent Australian.

The year was 1997. And the landmark speech - Safeguarding the Future: Australia's Response to Climate Change - was seen as a turning point, an awakening even, for the nation and its attitude towards a global challenge.

It was a speech that spawned the birth of Australia's renewable energy sector and the man who uttered those words went on to champion plans for an emissions trading scheme in an effort to reduce our contribution to greenhouse gases and global warming.

And just who was this environmental warrior? If you guessed Greens leader Bob Brown, you'd be barking up the wrong tree. Paul Keating, perhaps? Wrong again. Malcolm Turnbull? Nup.

It was John Winston Howard, the 25th prime minister of Australia, who would go on to establish the country's Renewable Energy Target.

Cut to the present and the debate around climate change, at least in Australia, has turned into a circus that would be entertaining if it wasn't so serious; and if the price of admission wasn't soaring.

It is a debate that has demonised science and those who have devoted their lives to research, where vested interests and big money have collided with ignorance and pig-headed arguments from ideologues on both sides of the debate.

Highlighting the farce, the majority of those with strong opinions on the subject have absolutely no expertise in the area, no understanding of the scientific process and probably have never even opened a science textbook.

According to the "doubters", the jury is out on climate change; it hasn't been proved. That's perfectly true.

It is worth remembering though that evolution is still just a theory despite the overwhelming evidence. And the theory grows stronger as research that aims to debunk it fails. That's the scientific process at work.

Why is it that these scientific tyros concentrate all their energies on climate? What about relativity? Was Einstein right? It is, after all, just a theory. But there is a strange lack of community passion on the relationship between energy and matter.

Why? Well, because money isn't involved. Industries and jobs aren't at risk.

Rather than argue the science, the debate should be about how we best cope with the change.

Instead, it has been hijacked by entrenched industries determined to maximise short-term returns at the expense of long-term solutions.

Nowhere is that better captured than in the proposed policy switch from carbon pricing to Direct Action that - depending on Palmer and the Senate crossbenches - is scheduled to take place this week.

The difference between the two policies can be neatly summed up as thus: the current policy aims to take money from polluters and distribute it to taxpayers. Direct Action takes money from taxpayers and hands it out to polluters.

What a neat solution if you are a large carbon emitter. Instead of paying a penalty, you are handed a reward. Welcome to the dawning of a new age in corporate welfare.

And for a Government supposedly so obsessed with budgets and austerity, the change in policy is baffling fiscal nightmare. On a straight costing analysis, the Federal Government will forgo $6.6 billion in annual revenue raised from the carbon tax.

That will be replaced with a policy that will not raise a single cent in revenue but will cost the budget $2.55 billion over three years.

It gets worse. So desperate is the Federal Government to push ahead, it has agreed to Palmer's insistence that household compensation for the tax remain in place, even after the tax is removed.

The fear campaign around the carbon tax - that it would prove to be a wrecking ball for the economy - proved to be devastatingly effective, even if it was entirely without substance.

Far greater forces have been at work. A mining investment boom that pushed the domestic currency into the stratosphere, crippling large sections of the trade-exposed economy, was the primary force that reshaped the economy.

Even when it comes to the cost of electricity, the sector most affected by the tax, it was not the carbon tax but an ill-timed over-investment in upgrading the network that caused power bills to surge in recent years.

Given electricity pricing in this country is so opaque, so complex and subject to the whims of a just a handful of operators, it is possible there will be little if any reduction in costs once the tax is axed.

Having invested so much political capital into its removal, having ramped up expectations to such a degree, if businesses and households see no discernible pricing change, the policy switch could well be a dangerous political and economic gamble.

On the global stage, Australia is becoming increasingly isolated.

Last month, Chinese premier Li Keqiang signed an agreement with UK prime minister David Cameron to work together towards a global framework for ambitious climate change.

US president Barak Obama is pushing ahead with ambitious carbon reduction policies and China and America last Tuesday signed eight partnership agreements to cut greenhouse gases.

As of this morning, Australia has two carbon reduction programs; the carbon price and a Renewable Energy Target (RET) program.

Most economists opt for a pricing model as the most efficient means of allocating resources. There is a certain irony that the Coalition, which purports to be the bastion of free market doctrine, is to replace the carbon price with a centralised, big government spending policy.

Criticism of the RET is that it essentially is a subsidy. That is the rationale being pushed by those who want it removed and a panel led by businessman Dick Warburton is in the process of deciding its future.

Should it go, Australia would rely entirely on Direct Action to fulfil our global obligations to cut carbon emissions by between 5 and 20 per cent of 1990 levels by 2020.

Could it be done? Sure. The only problem is that, according to Treasury estimates, the Federal Government would need to spend $8.5 billion in Direct Action in 2020 alone just to get to the minimum target.

That's the kind of outlay that would stop John Howard in his tracks.

Ian Verrender is the ABC's business editor. View his full profile here.