Accepting the science of climate change and its ramifications while opposing action out of political necessity? That would be bordering on outright evil, writes Jonathan Green.

It's been a bit of a week for it, for the provision of proof, if it were needed, that politics is pretty much exclusively the business of, well, politics.

First, there was Bruce Hawker's from-the-toilet-of-Air Force One account of the ALP campaign that first set fire to the house then managed to save a few sticks of furniture back in September.

We read how Kevin Rudd and Hawker rattled round the country like two flies in a bottle, essaying opinion, testing the public mood and responding as on a whim with programs and pronouncements to suit.

There is no great sense of policy conviction or deep purpose, simply a desperate lunge to the line with a litter of bespoke policy being whipped up - quite literally - on the fly.

Which takes us to John Howard, an alleged "conviction politician" of the old school, though on the basis of his speech a couple of nights back to the Global Warming Foundation (it presumably shares fully serviced office facilities with the Pond's Institute) we must now have profound doubts as to whether his convictions ever extended far beyond doing whatever might be necessary at any given moment to hold on to power.

(The flaw in this analysis is of course WorkChoices, which we'll have to put down to the sort of rush of earnest blood to the head any of us might suffer when looking out across an Upper House that is all eager smiles and readiness to please.)

The policy area in question deals with climate science and the political approaches to the issue of global warming. Mr Howard's speech deals with these things directly and is a revelation.

At this point in 2013 we find John Howard - the same man who as prime minister proposed an emissions trading scheme in an attempt to outbid Kevin Rudd's temporary embrace of "the greatest moral challenge of our time" - apparently delighted by the recent successes of the climate sceptic project.

As he told the Foundation in London two nights back:

Tony Abbott now has the great responsibility and honour of being PM of Australia because a little under four years ago he challenged what seemed to be a political consensus on global warming; won the leadership of his party by one vote; had it expressly confirm a change in its policy on the issue, and then confronted the incumbent government on global warming, with quite dramatic results...

So there you have it: Tony Abbott by John Howard's reckoning is the climate sceptic prime minister, a man who owes first his position in his party and now our parliament to a robust and politically opportunistic repudiation of, well, the facts of climate science.

And why, you have to wonder, is this such a victory? Taking the political prize hardly alters the substance or effect of scientific consensus. But then, as Mr Howard goes on to explain, we make a mistake in this discussion if we imagine the protagonists in our political play are motivated by concern for any realities other than the equally concrete facts of political advantage.

What we have witnessed is undoubtedly a political triumph, a great shift in the attitude of Australians, voters who by Mr Howard's own admission were making such a clamour for action on climate change by 2006 that even he, a climate change "agnostic", was forced to momentarily assume the appearance of concern:

... late in 2006 my Government hit a 'perfect storm' on the issue. Drought had lingered for several years in many parts of Eastern Australia, leading to severe restrictions on the daily use of water; not for the first or last time the bushfire season started early; the report by Sir Nicholas Stern hit the shelves, with the author himself visiting Australia, and lastly the former US Vice President Al Gore released his movie An Inconvenient Truth. To put it bluntly 'doing something' about global warming gathered strong political momentum in Australia.

Howard took a proposal for emissions trading to the 2007 election, but it was not enough to shade the greater climate enthusiasm of Rudd, a man who would in turn cave to shifting opinion and the desperate calculations of his own instincts for political self-preservation.

For opinion was turning, and has continued to do so, the public tutored relentlessly by a conservative media for presumably its own purely political purpose, against the simple facts of science. The great body of popular belief has now come to rest at a point somewhere between complacency and denial.

From 2007, in less than a single term of government, we watched a neat double play, first Howard, the climate agnostic who feigned respect for the facts of science in order to meet political necessity, and next Rudd, a prime minister prepared to abandon belief for precisely the same reason.

In a contest between facts - no matter how grave - and political opportunity, politics wins.

As it should, argues Howard:

I am sure you have heard that something is "above politics" or "too important to be left to the politicians", with politicians themselves sometimes being the worst culprits of all in advocating that decisions they should make are in fact determined by others. Politicians who bemoan the loss of respect for their calling should remember that every time they allow themselves to be browbeaten by the alleged views of experts, they contribute further to that loss of respect.

Science is all well and good, he says. But politicians must make the decisions on their own terms, balancing a range of other interests.

This would be well and good, but Howard himself, in the very same slim set of paragraphs, provides all the evidence we need that this politics is a business of constantly calculated mendacity, a business whose first and overwhelming instinct is to mine any circumstance for individual political advantage.

Howard goes on to reflect on the current state of discussion around climate science:

In the past five years, the dynamic of the global warming debate has shifted away from exaggerated acceptance of the worst possible implications of what a majority of climate scientists tell us, towards a more balanced, and questioning approach.

Yes, we have departed from the evidence into a realm propelled purely by political necessity. This may or may not be a comfort.

By this relentless political logic, it can only be a matter of time before we have a group of politicians who manage the ultimate act of pure political calculation, of fully accepting the truth of climate science and the dire possibilities that it entails, then acting against the dictates of that scientific certainty for narrow short-term advantage.

That would be a high point in modern politics, a moment that might achieve a blissful state of near political perfection and something close to outright evil.

Jonathan Green is presenter of Sunday Extra on Radio National and the former editor of The Drum. View his full profile here.