Business leaders calling for an end to the climate wars should direct their energies to the conservative faction of the Liberal Party, but even that is likely to be futile.
Among the conservatives are parliamentarians who actually believe climate change is a conspiracy cooked up by the United Nations, world meteorological organisations and NASA.
Others, such as former prime minister Tony Abbott, don't really believe in much at all, beyond political power.
Get that? Whatever position Labor adopts in an effort to end the climate wars Abbott and his band of malcontents will adopt the opposite.
Already, in seeking to end the climate wars, Labor has moved from its preference for a market-based emissions trading scheme for the whole economy to an emissions intensity scheme for the energy sector, onto Professor Alan Finkel's clean energy target, and now to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's National Energy Guarantee.
With due deference to the theme from M*A*S*H, the only chance of ending the climate wars is if Turnbull, Abbott, Bill Shorten and Lord Monckton formed a circle, held hands and sang: "CO2 is weightless, it brings on lovely changes, but I can take or leave it as I please."
When I argued in this column in June that Turnbull should cancel the five byelections and call a general election, I was suggesting he should at all costs avoid the "Killing Season" in December. But he clearly reckoned his "Kill Bill" strategy would work.
But unlike opinion polls, byelections involve real people voting at real polling booths. Rattled by a Liberal vote in Longman below 30 per cent, seven Queensland Coalition MPs on margins of less than 4 per cent – including alternative leader Peter Dutton on 2 per cent – now know they are facing electoral oblivion.
The federal election could easily be decided in Queensland alone. The LNP President has now called on all the party's MPs and Senators to shift their support to Dutton.
They and the rest of the conservative faction nationally will ramp up their demands of Turnbull. But regardless of the ferocity of Turnbull's attacks it will not be enough to satisfy the conservatives.
Voters disillusioned with the government – and there are many of them – will not be swayed by Coalition promises to bring down electricity prices after the next election. They will demand immediate action if they are to shift their votes back to the Coalition.
What might that immediate action involve?
Over the weekend, Abbott advocated withdrawing Australia from the Paris agreement to which he committed the country, while forcing existing coal-fired power stations to remain open beyond their commercial lives. Both are possibilities. So is an energy royal commission.
By Monday morning, Turnbull had capitulated, announcing he would give the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) the power to order electricity generators to divest assets they have acquired, even where the ACCC had already approved the acquisitions.
A Liberal government, purportedly the champion of free enterprise, will give the ACCC forced divestiture powers that even the regulator has described as "extreme" and "a bridge too far". Labor has never supported forced divestiture.
Coalition MPs inevitably will argue that if forced divestiture is good enough for the energy sector it's good enough for supermarkets and other industries.
Labor and the Coalition have announced the reregulation of electricity prices through the adoption of a default price as recommended by the ACCC. The default price will be cost-reflective, taking account of varying wholesale electricity prices in different locations, as well as retailers' marketing costs.
But a set of default prices could not be in place before the next election.
A desperate Coalition government will be tempted quickly to legislate a single, regulated electricity price that does not take account of different wholesale prices or marketing costs. This is the Basic Service Offer recommended to the Victorian government by a bipartisan review.
Such heavy-handed market interventions would stifle much-needed new investment in renewable energy. The conservative faction would be pleased with that, but even if the Liberals promised the Nationals to oblige taxpayers to fund a new coal-fired power station in north Queensland, planning and construction would take up to six years.
Business organisations demanding an end to the climate wars should recognise their members are likely to get whacked with unprecedented market intervention and reregulation by a Coalition government desperate for re-election. Does the business community really want bipartisan support for that?