Will the Liberal party take a stand on net zero or not? (I am using net zero as a shorthand way of labelling the whole ‘stop climate change with renewables’ package.) At the moment the optics are not good. Public opinion polls often suggest most of the electorate seems to accept that climate change has to be stopped by pursuing net zero. To which the Liberals appear to shrug their collective shoulders and mutter, ‘Well, if that’s what they think, we can’t change their minds.’

But you can. You can shift the Overton window. This takes its name from Joseph Overton, and means: ‘the spectrum of ideas on public policy and social issues considered acceptable or viable by the general public at a given time’. And if dispensing with net zero is not in the Overton window, too many Liberals throw their hands in the air and give up. That’s not necessary. Effective, creative retailing can shift one idea out of the Overton window and replace it with another.

Remember that Tony Abbot brilliantly sold his policies with memorable slogans, such as ‘Stop the Boats’ and ‘Axe the Tax’.Well, here’s a five-word slogan that can shift the debate on net zero: ‘Climate change cannot be stopped!’ Say it again. Say it often. Back it up with simple, clear arguments and the ground shifts. Climate change cannot be stopped!

This changes the shape of the debate. Stop arguing about whether climate change is happening or not, and how big a change it might be. Stop trying to win arguments with complicated facts and figures and percentages of this or that. The public is not listening. Instead tell them that whatever’s happening cannot be stopped. That short-circuits the whole debate. If climate change can’t be stopped, then the whole renewables push is pointless. There is no need to ruin the economy after all. Whatever is happening will happen no matter what Chris Bowen does.

Climate change cannot be stopped! That five-word slogan shifts the ground of the whole public debate. And the supporting arguments are not complicated, and won’t confuse people. Three quick points will do it.

First, climate change is normal, natural and permanent. Planet Earth is billions of years old. Climate change has been going on for billions years, so nothing we can do can stop it. Earth’s climate has been swinging between ice ages and interglacial periods for as long as this planet has existed. The last great ice age peaked around 25,000 years ago. The interglacial period we are currently in began around 10,000 years ago. Even during interglacial periods there can be cyclical changes. These changes gave us the ‘mini ice age’ that ran for about a thousand years, from the early-800s to the early-1800s. Since the mini ice age only ended in the 1830s we are (logically) in a warming part of the cycle. Climate change cannot be stopped because climate change is normal, natural and permanent.

Second, politicians can’t control the complexity of the global climate. Remember chaos theory was invented to help climatologists in the challenging task of understanding the interactive complexity of the global climate (‘A butterfly beats its wings in Brazil and there is a tsunami in Japan.’) It is absurd arrogance for politicians who can’t control the weather to claim that they can control the global climate.

Thirdly, major emitters of CO2 such as China, Russia, India and the US have opted out of concerted political action on climate change. If Australia dramatically reduces its emissions the rest of the world won’t notice, and the climate won’t notice. Climate change cannot be stopped because it would be absurd to pretend there is sufficient concerted political action to cause a significant shift.

The Libs should adopt a policy of adaptation –  a policy of keeping Australians safe regardless of what the inevitable (unstoppable) climate change brings to us.

We adapt – because climate change cannot be stopped.