Labor will never have a better time to revisit carbon pricing – but does it have the stomach to make polluters pay?

‘National emissions have started to come down, mostly thanks to the rise of solar power. But fossil fuels continue to thrive, particularly the coal and gas export industries,’ writes Adam Morton. Photograph: Mark Baker/AP

There is good news out there, even if it feels like scraps in a world on the brink. Some came last week – with plenty of caveats – when analysts at the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA) found coal-fired power generation decreased in both China and India last year.

This is a potentially big shift. Among other things, it exposes the hollowness of arguments in Australia that there is no point doing anything about the climate crisis because the big Asian economies are building endless new coal plants.