Guardian: The natural world is at the heart of Australian identity. “I love a sunburnt country, a land of sweeping plains, of ragged mountain ranges, of droughts and flooding rains,” runs a famous poem, but that attachment to the environment does not count for much in national political life. Under John Howard, Australia’s former prime minister, the country was notoriously sceptical of international efforts to fight climate change, even though, as a hot dry continent with a growing population, …