In the odd hours following Donald Trump’s election victory, many of us traced our shock to the obvious fact the world had just changed. But soon enough we realised that this obvious fact was wrong. The world had changed some time ago. It was just that we had missed it, caught in old ways of seeing, old ways of being. We often take a while to catch up to the present.

Those memories have come back to me over the past couple of weeks, as heavy grey-smoke skies have pressed down on Sydney, and the scent of bushfire has made its way inside. Yes, there have been fires before, just as there had been election upsets before – but to many of us this year feels different. You strike up conversations with people you don’t know about the fact this is the way it’s going to be from now on. And you know, too, that really we’ve been heading this way for some time, it’s just that we are now beginning to comprehend the scale.

And yet debate in this country, as conducted by politicians and the media, remains stuck, unproductively nostalgic for what debate once was, unwilling to concede the change that many citizens feel instinctively.

Deputy Prime Minister Michael McCormack attacked the Greens. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen

To briefly rehearse facts: after the fires began burning, the Deputy Prime Minister, Michael McCormack, said now was not the time to be talking about climate change. Those doing so were “pure, enlightened and woke capital-city greenies”. Then Greens senator Jordon Steele-John attacked those who would prop up coal: “You are no better than a bunch of arsonists.” His colleague, Adam Bandt, said the government was putting “lives at risk”.