One of the striking elements about the public’s belief in climate change that emerges from today’s Essential Report findings is its highly politicised nature.

Only 34% of Liberal voters believe climate change is caused by humans; 55% believe climate change is purely natural. It’s almost a straight reversal of community sentiment overall — 50% of voters believe climate change is human caused and 39% don’t. Greens voters, in contrast, rather strongly believe in man-made climate change.

The framing of climate change as an issue of political ideology has been one of the more successful achievements of those opposed to taking action. Climate change, like environmental conservation, is not an issue that belongs to one side of politics or the other. As Malcolm Turnbull likes to note, Margaret Thatcher was one of the earliest politicians to call for action to address a warming planet. Indeed, at the 2007 election both sides of Australian politics were committed to an emissions trading scheme; John Howard, as he’s often reminded, was committed to “the most comprehensive emissions trading scheme in the world”.

But the framing of climate change as a left-wing issue guarantees reflexive opposition from many on the Right, for whom rejecting the need to address climate change — indeed, rejecting its existence per se — becomes a matter of partisan faith rather than common sense.