After more than a decade of darkness in Australia’s parliament, today was a good day for the climate

The passing of the government’s climate bill ‘demonstrates that Australian politics isn’t broken. It demonstrates that progress and pragmatism can coexist’. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

There have been a lot of bad days for the climate in the Australian parliament. Days that make you rage. Days that make you weep.

That infamous vote in 2009 sinking Kevin Rudd’s carbon pollution reduction scheme. Years of apocalyptic screeching about nonexistent carbon taxes. The repeal of the clean energy scheme. That day when Scott Morrison brandished a lump of coal supplied by the Minerals Council of Australia and told MPs across the chamber not to be scared.