Treasurer Scott Morrison with a lump of coal during question time. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen With existing records for both cities currently hovering around 46 degrees, this is not simply a question of running out of space for your towel at Bondi. Or your air conditioner struggling to keep up. Do our cities (and bodies) have the capacity to withstand this kind of heat? As Lewis told The Guardian, how would public transport systems cope during a 50-degree heatwave? How would hospitals handle the numbers of people overcome by heatstroke? How would we continue to power our cities? "Urgent action on climate change is critical," the ANU academic said. It's stating the completely and massively obvious. And yet if anything, the prevailing political mood is one of scepticism – even antagonism – towards climate action.

Malcolm Turnbull – a man who lost his job in 2009 over his support for an emissions trading scheme – is facing an uphill battle to get a clean energy target through the Coalition party room. Even though it is highly unlikely to be as ambitious as chief scientist Alan Finkel's recommendation for 42 per cent of Australia's electricity to be generated by renewables by 2030. (And in fact, is unlikely to even be called a "clean energy target" as this sounds too greenie). MP-at-large Tony Abbott is among a handful of Coalition backbenchers threatening to cross the floor if there is a move to introduce a CET. Describing climate change as "very much a third order issue" and pointing to recent power blackouts, the former prime minister says there is "no chance that our party room will support any significant increase in the amount of renewables in our system". But it's not just renegade Coalition backbenchers who are resisting moves towards renewable energy. Earlier this year, one of the most senior members of the government brought a lump of coal into question time. "This is coal, don't be afraid!" Treasurer Scott Morrison heckled Labor in February, as if the Opposition was displaying an aversion to penicillin or round Earth theories. Fast-forward half a year and the government is trying to heavy AGL into keeping its Liddell coal-fired power station open, even though the company says it won't deliver reliable energy and wants to replace it with renewable projects.

It's hard to see how things could get any weirder. Australians know that dangerous change is afoot. Apart from all the scientists warning about a warming planet, we are already living through record temperatures. A recent report from the Climate Council found more than 260 heat and low rainfall records were broken during this year's winter months. The "exceptionally warm and dry winter" was made 60 times more likely by climate change, it said. According to a 2016 Climate Institute poll, 77 per cent of respondents think climate change is occurring, while only 3 per cent nominate coal as their preferred energy source for Australia. A further 90 per cent think responsibility for climate change rests with the federal government to "some degree", while only 19 per cent say the government is doing a "fairly good" or "excellent" job on this front. Yet where is the public pressure on the government to do something serious about climate change? Right now, you could be forgiven for thinking Abbott's "coal rulez, OK?" line is the majority view out there in Voterland.

Perhaps we can attribute the lack of momentum here to fatigue: people are sick of a decade's worth of political fighting on climate change without anything much to show for it. Or maybe short-term power prices seem more important than medium-term disaster scenarios. Or is it because these scenarios are simply too overwhelming and horrifying to contemplate? Better then to leave it to the politicians. They may not be doing much, but at least it makes it their problem.