It seems that Australia and Canada have much in common, apart from being constitutional monarchies linked to the UK. They are very large, some three to four million square miles, with populations around 25 to 35 million living mainly around the edges. They are also geologically very diverse with the widest range of valuable metal ores and extensive, but lower-quality, oil and coal deposits which have proved to be very seductive economically. The Athabaska oil sands in Alberta, and the Latrobe Valley brown coal lignite deposits east of Melbourne are both filthy, carbon-rich climate-changing fossil fuels that should stay in the ground.

Both countries intend to cash in on their geological heritages and have made a determined political effort to ignore the relevant climate-change science, and to commit themselves to short-term gain irrespective of the longer-term results for themselves, let alone the rest of the world.

It’s not as though Australia is short of alternatives for electricity, with all the sun, and the open spaces for wind turbines. They should be ashamed of themselves for producing 90 per cent of their electricity by burning coal, and developing new mines and ports for exporting it from Queensland.

Last year they suffered record high temperatures and the most extensive bush fires. This summer looks similar with temperatures up to 43C (109F) at the tennis tournament in Melbourne. The response was to close the roof and turn on the air conditioning, so gobbling up more electricity by burning more coal and releasing more CO2. It’s hardly rational, or responsible, but the government has abandoned all attempts to reduce CO2. It clearly doesn’t accept the international scientific consensus and has recently repealed a fledgling carbon tax. Canada is no better. It congratulated the Australians on the repeal, and has withdrawn from the Kyoto agreement as they intend to develop their tar and oil sand reserves come what may.

This involves an enormous amount of heated water to boil up the bituminous gloopy sands that cover an area larger than the UK, dotted with tens of square kilometres of man-made toxic lakes. The process of extraction causes almost as much CO2 as the end product, and the only hope is that President Obama refuses to support the Keystone XL pipeline, to take this Canadian oil to the Gulf coast. Fingers crossed.

It’s no coincidence that in both countries, fossil fuel and mining industries dominate the politics, the newspapers and the decisions, and we will all suffer the consequences.