It is obvious after last week’s budget that Australia is no longer part of the world’s weather patterns. Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Treasurer Joe Hockey have, in effect, excised the continent from the global climate, and lowered a dome of denial to prevent any penetration from outside forces of nature.

This is no mean feat, but, given the Coalition’s attitude towards climate change, not surprising. The budget starkly illustrates the meeting of philosophy with politics, delivered from a position of scepticism. It is an ignoble legacy on which to be judged.

Per capita, Australia is one of the worst polluters of carbon dioxide in the world. So what does the government do? It cuts funding for renewable energy and research. This is a retrograde step and a degradation of vision.

Budget documents reveal that funds for climate-change-related programs will be savagely cut from $5.75 billion in the present fiscal year to $1.25 billion by next fiscal year and halved again by 2017-18.

The government is set to reintroduce legislation to repeal the carbon tax on July 1, when the new Senate sits. Last March, the bills (which included the axing of the Climate Change Authority) were rejected. Mr Abbott described this as ”an act of economic vandalism”. The fate of the bills in the Senate with its new members is unclear.

This hardly makes for a decisive strategy. It is certainly not ”direct action”. In 2012, global emissions of carbon dioxide reached a record 34.5 billion tonnes. The rise was slower than previous years, which some attribute to a move from fossil fuels combined with greater reliance on renewable energy.

In Australia, moving to a benign source of energy, such as solar, is met with the actions of this government in the virtual denuding of the Australian Renewable Energy Agency. The agency’s chairman, Greg Bourne, described the cuts as ”clearing the decks” in supporting renewable energy. As to the promise of 1 million solar homes? It’s gone with the wind, which as a source of energy Mr Hockey seems loath to commend.

Graeme Pearman, a former scientist with the CSIRO (which has also been savaged), said the government’s approach was ”pretty mindless … They’re not concerned about our children’s and grandchildren’s future at all.”

The remark by Industry Minister Ian Macfarlane that the government ”acknowledges the role of renewable energy in Australia’s energy mix” speaks volumes. An acknowledgment is not an endorsement.

The UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report, issued last month, said that the key to tackling increased emissions was to ”decarbonise” electricity generation. By mid-century, 80 per cent of power must be generated from renewables, nuclear or carbon-capture sources. The budget has cut funds for carbon capture.

When asked to comment on the IPCC report, Mr Abbott paraphrased a century-old poem from Dorothea Mackellar: ”Australia’s a land of droughts and flooding rains. Always has been, always will be.”

This may be so, Prime Minister. Yet it makes a sorry contrast with the initiatives US President Barack Obama has embarked on to combat carbon pollution. One looks to the future, one looks to the past. The present, and future, in this country seems to be history.