HAVING wrangled an agreement from a still-divided National Party, Prime Minister Scott Morrison has secured the joint party-room backing he needs to take an Australian pledge of "net zero emissions by 2050" to COP26 in Glasgow.
In his announcement yesterday, titled "The Australian Way", Mr Morrison restated his long-held insistence that carbon-reduction would be achieved "through technology, not taxes", with the government determined to stand behind the nation's agricultural and resources industries.
Carbon reduction involves the private sector as well as governments but public policies and the laws that underpin them are some of the main drivers of change.
In May, the Morrison government unveiled plans for its Technology Investment Roadmap that would guide taxpayer spending on new energy and decarbonisation initiatives.
The prime minister referred to this yesterday, nominating hydrogen and "low cost solar" as two of the areas the government saw merit in.
Mr Morrison's speech: The Australian Way
Importantly, Mr Morrison insisted that the government would not support "any mandate, domestic or international, to force the closure of our resources or agricultural industries".
This line, as much as anything in the statement, reflects the National Party's determination to represent its electorates.
The Nats are inevitably derided as laggards - or, worse still, climate deniers" - in the national debate, but Nationals MP Darren Chester may well be correct when he said on Monday that "most of Australia is somewhere about the middle on the issue".
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Whatever happens at Glasgow, achieving anything like "net zero" will require enormous changes.
If Mr Morrison thought climate change had been "challenging" for the Coalition over the past 20 years, the pressure will only increase from here, with the carbon footprints of agriculture, steel making and our other industrial endeavours - big and small - joining coal-fired electricity under the carbon-reduction microscope.
And if Mr Morrison was expecting kudos for dragging the Nationals over the line, green groups were less than impressed, with the Climate Council, for example, calling the PM's announcement "half-baked" and "a joke".
The Climate Wars continue, and the Battle of Glasgow is about to begin.
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