At the Victorian election, Labor continued to proudly promulgate its pro-renewables policy.

Federally, the ignominious loss of Sydney’s blue-ribbon seat of Wentworth was not helped by concern about climate policy under a national leader renowned for laughingly brandishing a lump of coal on the floor of the House of Representatives. A typical response came from Veronica Hester, a 15-year-old student in Mr Morrison’s electorate, in an article on our pages earlier this week: ‘‘If he and our politicians listened to the climate science we have been taught, and took action like those of us in school, we wouldn’t have to resort to strike action.’’

The young people have science and history on their side. Only fringe ideologues continue to reject the reality of existentially dangerous anthropogenic global warming. Civil disobedience has been instrumental in progressive change throughout the ages. The students did not take the action lightly. It follows ongoing government failure that has needlessly crimped investment in renewable energy and has been criticised by industry, investors and consumers.

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The students’ mobilisation comes after a decade of failure by Australian governments on both sides to generate an energy policy, a core element of climate-change mitigation, and as international mining conglomerate Adani announced a reduced version of its controversial coal mine in central Queensland, which clearly will be fought at the community level. For now, Adani has been forced by activism to abandon plans for a 50-year massive mining and rail project because banks eschew Adani’s Carmichael project.

A key element of that activism was organised by the Australian Youth Climate Coalition, whose 150,000 membership dwarfs the combined total of that of Australia’s political parties and which helped the students organise their day of protest and call to action. Adani says it will have to finance the scaled-down operation internally.

Young people focus on the future and they vote, or will soon be able to. They are informed, articulate and committed.

The future is clearly in fine hands, but it would be wise for today’s politicians to pay attention right now.

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