By Blair Palese and Charlie Wood, 350.org Australia
The recent Australian election seems to have thrown up more questions than answers. Sure, we now have a Government - be it a minority or very slim majority one - but we are also faced with an open-ended period of inaction while urgent issues -- climate change, economic planning post-mining, refugees, education and healthcare -- wait in limbo.
Australia is not alone in experiencing an increasingly volatile political climate. In the past six months Spain has had two elections, neither of which have led to the formation of a Government. Austria recently came within a few thousand votes of electing a president from the extreme right - only to elect a far left candidate instead.
In the UK last month, the country voted to leave the EU ending more than four decades of membership and undermining the multilateral approach to cutting carbon pollution that many within the EU have fought for. In the US, a billionaire demagogue reality TV star is running for president on the Republican ticket, threatening to build a wall to block out Mexico, ban Muslims from entering the country and dismantle the country's climate policy.
Amidst such political instability policies to address climate change -- the pressing issue of our time -- languish.
In Australia we look set to inherit a Parliament riddled with even more climate change deniers than before. It is probable that up to three One Nation Senators will be elected.
Their climate policy opens with the statement:
"Climate change has and will continue to be used as a political agenda by politicians and self interest groups or individuals for their own gain. We cannot allow scare mongering by people such as Tim Flannery, who make outlandish statements and are not held accountable. Climate change should not be about making money for a lot of people and giving scientists money."
In such a tight Parliament, whichever party forms Government will have to work with One Nation to get legislation through the upper house, making the demands and anti-windfarm antics of David Leyonhjelm pale in comparison.
It is not only in the legislative battle that One Nation's conservative populism will have to be fought. Their presence in the Australian Parliament will afford these extremist views a credibility they would otherwise lack. Combine that with a media hungry to cover the Hanson circus and One Nation will have a very powerful platform to influence culture and further muddy an already contested climate space.
It is easy to lambast people who vote for Trump in the US, Hanson in Australia, or to label Brexit in the UK as racist, dangerous and ignorant as many commentators have. But this is reductive and ignores the many social issues at play.
Margo Kingston, who followed Hanson on the campaign trail in 1998, noted that Hanson voters are "by and large nice people with little money who were largely uninterested in politics".
They have been left behind by globalisation and feel cast out by the political class.
Combine with that the progressive community that has struggled to make progressive issues resonate with this block of voters. This includes climate change, which is being painted as a trojan horse pushed by a privileged class to increase cost of living and take jobs.
Because of this framing it has become a popular wedge that populist politicians can invoke: an issue of elites and 'out of touch' inner city folk against the everyday Australians. Look at Tony Abbott's scare campaign around the carbon price.
The problem we now face globally is how to transition away from dirty polluting fossil fuels to a clean energy economy amidst all this political instability and within the rapidly narrowing window of opportunity we have left.
The new Parliament has three years of chaos ahead of it before we can replace them, yet we have just five years before we will have burnt through the carbon budget that scientists agree will take us beyond 1.5 degrees of warming -- the red line that will spell the end for many Pacific Islands.
Renewable energy needs long term planning and stability to create space for the investment necessary. This includes stability around Government policy to ensure that every three years the playing field isn't going to be radically changed, as has happened in Australia over the past six years.
In order to provide this stability against a volatile, populist Parliament, the major parties in Australia need to agree to a multi-partisan strategy to tackle climate change and promote new energy solutions. We have already seen both the ALP and the Liberal Party take the same tactic on asylum seeker policy, for better or for worse. So we know it can be done.
The current parliament offers the perfect scenario to undertake this project.
By all parties agreeing to targets and effective measures to reach them, it can take climate change out of the contested space, provide stability for the renewable energy sector and freeze out the extremist views of many in our Parliament.
The election cleared out some of the worst climate blockers from the Coalition, and threw up a crossbench that are overwhelmingly in support of renewables and climate action. It won't be easy, but surrounded by political instability, perhaps climate action can provide the glue to stick this Parliament together.