People are angry. Friday’s Sack ScoMo Sydney rally drew international media attention. A petition demanding that the Governor-General dissolve Parliament for “corrupt behaviour”, misinformation about climate science and worsening the fires has more than 190,000 signatures. Almost 52,000 have signed a petition for class action against the Morrison government for climate inaction. And there’s more. Illustration: Simon Letch Credit:Simon Letch Loading Tasmanian barrister and former Liberal staffer Greg Barns says “it is only a matter of time before the courts are forced to step in and hold government accountable as they have done with Big Tobacco and Big Pharma”. The reckoning will come. It’s not scapegoating. The anger is well-founded. Governments at both levels have energetically pursued coal-mining despite knowing for years that climate change, exacerbated by coal, would likely extend and intensify bushfire season by 2020 – as Ross Garnaut’s report foresaw in 2008. They’ve wilfully ignored the science and fed us a diet of coal-is-good-for-humanity-type lies.

So is suing government possible? The class-action idea draws on two separate precedents. First is December’s Netherlands Supreme Court decision to uphold a 2015 ruling requiring the state to reduce Holland’s emissions by 25 per cent on 1990 levels by 2020 to protect its citizens from climate change. The second is the successful class action on behalf of 5000 people after Black Saturday, during which 173 people people died. It was the biggest action ever undertaken in Australia. The defendants, power distributor SP Ausnet and asset manager Utility Services Group, took it to the Supreme Court but the case secured a record $495 million payout for victims. Loading Interestingly, since 2015, Australia has become the world’s second highest climate litigator. Admittedly, with 94 cases so far (says a report from the London School of Economics' Grantham Institute), we’re well behind the US, with its 1023 cases to date. So maybe it is possible, but sue on what grounds? Lawyers say it would be technically tricky, because liability means proving damage and causality. But consider this.

Corrs Chambers Westgarth lawyers identify three waves of climate litigation in Australia. The first was about wrongful approval of fossil-fuel projects, including coal mines such as Anvil Hill. The second, current wave attempts to force companies to assess and report climate risks. The third, coming wave will be when communities afflicted by climate change “litigate to try to force action by government and the largest emitters, and to seek damages…” Is that us? Government’s duty of care towards us is in fact their only job. Is it not negligent, then, to have known of imminent danger and not to have done everything possible to avert it? Not to have told us? On the contrary, with the moral maturity of pre-schoolers, they deliberately fudged, obfuscated and mangled the truth. As if it weren’t bad enough that bots and trolls spread “it’s-arson-not-climate” type lies across social media, and that sites such as sciencealert.com also report massive attacks from climate trolls, our own politicians, whom we trust with our children’s future, seem intent on spreading similar propaganda. Loading “We are one of the very few nations … that meet and beat our Koyoto targets,” said Disaster and Emergency Minister David Littleproud this week. “And we’ll do the same again with Paris … But we need the rest of the world to come with us.” As if.

The second Kyoto target means reducing Australia’s emissions to 5 per cent below 2000 levels by 2020. As you know, Australia’s per capita emissions, already second highest in the world, have increased every year since the carbon tax was scrapped by the Coalition in 2014. So how do they argue they’ll be “meeting Kyoto”? By some very dodgy accounting, is how. Instead of tracking our emissions over time, the government calculated total emissions over the period then compared them with the 2012 prediction, which was high due to unanticipated renewables uptake under Labor and the carbon tax. (John Howard’s “Australia clause” in the Kyoto Protocol allowed our emissions actually to increase.) Thus, says RMIT ABC Fact Check, the Coalition falsely claims credit for Labor’s reductions, even while allowing emissions to rise. Loading Liberal MP Craig Kelly insisted on UK breakfast television that Australia has “had in the last two years the highest uptake in the world of renewable energy”. Not true. When Piers Morgan said, with incredulity, that Australia’s government stands by “as virtually your entire country is eviscerated by fires”, Kelly insisted “there is simply no trend” towards longer drought or higher temperatures. “I follow the science,” he said. Except he doesn’t. And when meteorologist Laura Tobin said: “You have the second-highest carbon emissions per person on earth and you’re burying your head in the sand,” Kelly, a former furniture salesman, called her an “ignorant Pommy weather girl”. Another lie.

Then there’s Tony Abbott’s ludicrous insistence that the world is “in the grip of a climate cult” and that Australia had suffered power shortages and price hikes due to carbon-abatement measures. And Scott Morrison’s pretence that climate-related boycotts are “selfish” and must be outlawed. And always, the ridicule, the dissing of science. Politicians lie to create wars and win them. But climate is too important for that. Climate should unify us, not divide us. Climate is survival. Our leaders’ decision to play football with climate will prove their most heinous legacy – closely followed by their determination to blow smoke up our arses – when they’re the ones with their pants on fire.