Peter Boyer says it is not too late to catch up with global leaders
There's the odd spark of light in the perpetual twilight of government climate action around Australia, signs that some in the halls of power are sensing all is not well.
Renewable energy, transport and urban planning policies put South Australia, Victoria and the ACT ahead of the pack, but Queensland, NSW and Western Australia have pockets of achievement, with a legion of local councils and communities leading the charge. 
In Tasmania, some councils have shown initiative in developing more climate-friendly policies. There are hints that a State Government that once called itself a climate leader is starting to realise it has some catching up to do.
Tasmanian Energy Minister Matthew Groom has had the good sense to appoint Tony Concannon to his Energy Security Taskforce.
Concannon, once chief executive of the company that ran Australia's biggest, dirtiest coal-power station, is now Reach Solar Energy chairman.
From Reach's work in South Australia, Concannon knows something that has long eluded Tasmanian decision-makers - that new storage and transmission technologies enable wind and solar to do seriously heavy lifting in power generation.
Government inaction in this space has spawned a new national Renewable Energy Party, which seeks a much faster solar and wind rollout and fairer feed-in tariffs. In Hobart on Friday it introduced local candidates for the Senate and the Lower House seats of Bass, Braddon and Lyons.
REP's emergence is a sign governments are not grasping the grave climate threat or actively looking for solutions, and it is not just a Coalition problem. Last week Senator Lisa Singh joined other Labor MPs opposing their party's climate-unfriendly policy of diesel tax rebates for miners.
Politics is said to be the art of the possible, but how do we define what's possible, and how do we know until we try?
In revealing the limitations of the old orthodoxies, our changing world offers opportunities to lift our eyes and push back the boundaries.
One of those outmoded orthodoxies is the idea that coal is essential to Australia's economic wellbeing.
Taking account of its emissions and considering other possibilities, coal seems eminently expendable, especially in light of the plight of the Great Barrier Reef.
Last week, the ARC Coral Reef Studies Centre announced that an aerial survey of 911 reefs off Queensland showed more than half to be severely bleached and only 8 per cent unaffected. Could there be stronger evidence the reef is facing an existential crisis?
Warming ocean waters caused the bleaching and, if emissions are not reduced, will ultimately kill this natural wonder. There is also no dispute that exporting and burning the coal from a huge new Queensland coal mine will add to warming.
Having controversially approved the mining and exporting of that coal, Australia pressured UNESCO to drop all reference to the reef in the United Nations   May report on climate risks to World Heritage properties. UNESCO agreed, a decision it probably came to regret.
The world took notice. The New York Times, Al Jazeera English, the BBC and the London Daily Telegraph were among news outlets headlining Australia's airbrushing from the report. All other countries had opened themselves to scrutiny. We were alone in this blatant act of censorship.
Australia is not alone in undermining climate action by driving emissions-intensive development, but in trying to stop scrutiny of this double standard we have managed to achieve the opposite - unfavourable global attention - just as we did earlier by sacking CSIRO climate scientists.
We are better than that. Individuals, business interests and community groups all over the country have produced an abundance of ideas around renewable energy, transport, urban planning and waste management, among many other things.
It is a fair bet that some of these ideas won't fly, but we never get the chance to find out. In too many cases they are not getting past first base, stymied by blinkered official thinking, protocols and structures, and rejected with little or no acknowledgment.
We won't manage the climate challenge without government participation, but our political masters are out of their depth. They should admit this and fling open the doors to public engagement.
Peter Boyer, who began his journalism career at the Mercury, wrote about Antarctic science for many years before training as a climate change presenter. In 2014 he was awarded an Order of Australia Medal for services to science communication.