This is the Guardian.

Today, for years, Australia's right-wing politicians saw global heating as a fringe issue.

On Saturday, it helped to lead them to one of the worst defeats in Australian political history.

There's this weird thing about Australia. The country has been absolutely hammered these

past few years by devastating bushfires, droughts, terrible floods.

We were warned of catastrophic conditions and right now there are seven fires

burning at emergency level. Cars washed away and homes decimated. Authorities are warning of

a life-threatening flood emergency. It comes in the lead up to November's climate summit

ding Glasgow and lives pressure on the Morrison government to increase its carbon cutting ambitions.

But the response in our politics has been largely to do the bare minimum to cut carbon emissions

and leave coal and gas in the ground. The nearly two decade fight over how Australia should

deal with global heating has been called the climate wars. On the one hand, there have been

these scientists and campaigners raising the alarm arguing this freak weather we're seeing

isn't an accident. On the other side, there's Australia's powerful fossil fuel industry

and politicians like Scott Morrison who's been so devoted to coal he once brought a piece of it

into parliament. This is coal. Don't be afraid. Don't be scared. It's coal. Mr Speaker,

those opposite have an ideological pathological fear of coal. There's no word for coal

of Fabia, officially Mr Speaker, but that's the melody that afflicts those opposite.

The climate was really mean that for a decade now any attempt by any party to have a halfway

credible policy on reducing Australia's greenhouse emissions has been met with an incredibly

shrill and incredibly effective political attack that has unceded prime ministers, unceded

opposition leaders and really prevented us from having a credible climate policy for more than a

...