Ten years ago today Malcolm Turnbull was getting stuck in to a debate in Parliament House with Peter Garrett about climate change.

Climate change, said Turnbull, was “an enormous challenge and probably the biggest one our country faces, the world faces, at the moment.”

At the time, Turnbull was the environment minister in John Howard’s final term. Now of course, Turnbull is prime minister.

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Garrett, halfway through his six-year stint as a Labor politician, was Kevin Rudd’s shadow environment minister. Tonight, Garrett will be on stage in Germany with Midnight Oil.

“It is called global warming for a reason,” Turnbull told Garrett. “A tonne of CO2 that goes into the atmosphere has the same impact on the world’s temperature, regardless of where it comes from — whether it is emitted in Australia, Europe, China or the United States. So an effective global response is vital.”

A few seconds earlier, Turnbull had ridiculed Garrett as an idealist who “tries to change his spots all the time” and had “abandoned almost all of the positions he has had in his life — or has purported to abandon them”.

Knowing what came next, Turnbull’s characterisation of Garrett as an opportunist with no political backbone should be deeply embarrassing for the prime minister.

We are now stuck on another chapter in the annals of the climate wars, with still more uncertainty over if, and how, the government might treat a third-choice policy proposal to bring emissions down in the power sector.

It has been a dizzying 10 years since Turnbull’s exchange with Garrett. Let’s try and get through them in one paragraph.

Howard lost to Kevin Rudd, who ran promising to ratify the UN’s Kyoto protocol on climate change. Turnbull became the party leader in opposition, but after backing a policy to price carbon, lost to Tony Abbott in a leadership spill. Rudd was knifed by Julia Gillard, with Rudd’s backsliding on climate policy helping to sharpen the blade. Gillard won an election, introduced a carbon price, but Rudd retook the leadership and then lost an election to Abbott. Abbott repealed the carbon price, but then lost the leadership to Turnbull, who then won an election [… and breath].

In among all that Turnbull had fashioned himself as a climate hawk — one of those rare creatures of the conservative side of politics willing to talk with conviction on climate change.

In a 2010 speech Turnbull said the country had to get to a situation “where all or almost all of our energy comes from zero or very near zero-emissions sources.”

“We as a human species have a deep and abiding obligation to this planet and to the generations that will come after us,” he said.

Earlier that year, Turnbull told parliament: “Climate change is a global problem. The planet is warming because of the growing level of greenhouse gas emissions from human activity. If this trend continues then truly catastrophic consequences will ensue, from rising sea levels to reduced water availability to more heatwaves and fires.”

Turnbull was a clear advocate for a price on greenhouse gas emissions, saying: “Given that the cheapest fuels are generally the dirtiest, in the absence of a clear carbon price signal new (power generating) capacity is likely to be coal rather than gas or rather than renewables.”

“Plainly stated, in the absence of a clear carbon price signal, either no new investments will be made or investments will be made in new carbon intensive infrastructure because they are more profitable in a world where there is no price on carbon emissions.”

But then Turnbull nailed the real reason why Australia is, as the recently resigned Climate Change Authority member Prof John Quiggin told me, at the back of the international pack on climate policy.

There was a need, Turnbull said back in 2010, “for leadership and direction” on climate policy to get a price on greenhouse gas emissions.

And this is exactly what we have not had. Leadership.

That’s the reason Australia does not have a price on greenhouse gas emissions but has in its place a legacy of failed policy decisions, uncertainty and bitterness.

Fossil fuel interests, climate science denialists and anti-green zealots have crushed any political will to genuinely tackle the issue. They made it toxic and too many “leaders” let them.

Failing to stand up to those elements gets us to the point where electricity prices are going through the roof and the mirage of “clean coal” seems almost real. A prime minister who once understood the urgency of the problem now thinks it can be solved by supporting the country’s biggest ever coalmine.

You can hear the evidence for this lack of political will in some of the phrases Turnbull and his ministers have been keen to adopt in the climate and energy debate.

They will tell you that it is not the job of government to “pick winners” and energy policies should be “technology neutral”.

Both positions are absurd and should be seen as code for “we don’t have the courage to take on our detractors”.

They are phrases designed to pander to people who go out of their way to claim “coal is good for humanity.”

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Let’s just ask ourselves, if it’s not the job of government to pick winners, then what’s the alternative? Picking losers? Going all-out for mediocrity?

As Turnbull said in 2010, by 2050 “all or almost all” of our electricity would need to come from sources that had zero, or near zero, emissions.

There is no “technology neutral” policy that will get you to that point. What you need are policies that clearly discriminate, yet nobody is brave enough to say it.

If Australia really does want to find a way out of the climate wars, then it will need a leader who has not “abandoned almost all of the positions he has had in his life”.