If one thing is clear from the detail Abbott announced it is that the balance in the Liberal Party between those who see climate change as an urgent, looming and potentially catastrophic possibility and those who deny its very existence, has shifted to favour the latter. As much was flagged in Abbott's election but now we know for sure.

To accept that climate change is profound, entrenched, man-made and potentially disastrous on the other hand - the Government's professed position - is to accept the necessity of some sort of solution that involves fundamental changes in human behaviour, here and everywhere else. The Government has taken the line that this might best be achieved through market mechanisms, placing a price on carbon to drive sweeping grass-roots change toward a quickly achieved lower carbon future.

The Opposition sees climate change as a milder, possibly purely political, phenomenon that can be addressed through a range of 'direct action' palliatives.

Or perhaps not even that. By framing the discussion repeatedly in terms of A Great Big New Tax On Everything, Tony Abbott has shifted the discussion, with no great subtlety, away from the rich, awkward, complex policy ground of climate politics, CPRSs and the like, toward the more familiar terrain of tax, hip pockets and simple self interest.

That this discussion could be so readily subverted is something that the Government can only blame itself for.

The Australian boosted the Coalition plan this morning as Tony Abbott's cut-through climate plan and in truth the matter being cut through is the screen of complexity and obscurity laid by the Government's own fumbled prosecution of its CPRS.

Odd that they should come to this discussion with a ringing 2007 mandate to do something about a phenomenon accepted as grave and demanding action, and then so comprehensively trip through the process. Result: we now find the field increasingly surrendered publicly to denialists and conspiracy theorists, to the point that the political opposition feels confident to take its chances ignoring the fundamental environmental risks and going to the people framing the whole issue as a matter of tax.

The process of appeasement and compromise that saw the Government set a meaningless target of 5 per cent reduction for its CPRS opened the door. Abbott's tree planting, soil sequestration plan can claim environmental parity, when in truth 5 per cent pretty much does nothing to alleviate the climate problem; according to some, it all but seals our, well, doom.

Things might have been different had the Government pursued a sterner, higher, determined target; rather than a long, agonised process that began with the shelving of Ross Garnaut and ended in a welter of polluter amelioration. Had Kevin Rudd and Penny Wong been more effective in continuing to communicate a genuine concern for the fundamental problem of climate change, the likes of Christopher Monckton and Nick Minchin might never have gained a foothold in the national discussion. And we might have been spared the retail politics oversimplification of a Great Big Tax On Everything. In fact, to credit the science, we might indeed be facing The Greatest Moral Challenge Of Our Time.

The Government's overarching desire to please everybody with its complex climate solution has set up a pre-election debate in which one side will increasingly flirt with open scepticism and outright denial, while the other - its legislation rejected, its message compromised - struggles against the simple and time-honoured allegation that all it wants to do is raise tax.

As proof, Monckton and Abbott will hold talks in the next few days, a meeting that would have seemed very odd indeed just last year. Almost unthinkable in fact, but then much has changed.