The best thing that can be said about the Coalition’s internal brawl over whether to abandon its support for reaching net zero emissions by 2050 is that it has some honesty in it. Not much honesty, but if you look closely you may see some light breaking through.

The federal Liberals and Nationals have never supported the idea of reaching net zero by 2050. Some individual MPs have, but not the parties. We know this because they have not backed a policy to help meet it since Scott Morrison adopted the target in 2021 to try to deflect rising pressure at home and abroad.

It means the public argument playing out in recent weeks has been about politics far more than substance. When Liberal MPs meet in Canberra on Wednesday they will be really just discussing whether to drop the charade.

The taxpayer-funded nuclear energy policy rejected by Australian voters at the last election was a fossil fuel policy in disguise. If it had been introduced and worked – a Kosciuszko-sized “if”, according to some experts – it would have meant stalling the growth of renewable energy and burning a stack more coal and gas for power until at least the mid-2040s. The Coalition also promised to abolish or limit all climate measures introduced in Labor’s first term.

Since getting thumped in May, it has dropped its election stance. But the Coalition’s shadow energy minister, Dan Tehan, has signalled its replacement policy could include subsidies to introduce not only nuclear energy, but boost coal and gas. How this would square with the second part of his title – shadow minister for emissions reduction – is anyone’s guess.

The Nationals’ leader, David Littleproud, has said his party’s decision last week to abandon the net zero emissions target is “not denying the science of climate change” because “what we’re saying is there’s a better, cheaper, fairer way to address it”.

Has Littleproud explained what that better, cheaper, fairer way would be? You can probably guess the answer. He also hasn’t explain how voters should interpret the Coalition’s decision to drop the title of shadow minister for climate change after the election as anything other than a form of climate denial.

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When not talking about itself, the Coalition would rather talk about energy prices than the climate crisis. Its supporters in the media would certainly prefer this. And, to a point, fair enough. Rising energy prices are a real issue.

It has become accepted wisdom in certain circles that power bills are soaring due to the rollout of renewable energy. Plenty of news reports have repeated this claim unchallenged, or at least let the implication stand.

But, even in an age of Trumpification and algorithm-driven Armageddon, the facts should matter. And they say something different.

Electricity bills increased substantially shortly after the Albanese government was elected for one main reason: Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine sent global gas prices skyrocketing. That it coincided with the arrival of a Labor government doesn’t make it Anthony Albanese’s fault, no matter how much some may dislike him.

It also wasn’t Labor’s fault that, about the same time, coal prices were pushed up by flooding at east coast mines, and outages at ageing coal power plants reduced competition in the power grid. Combined, these issues pushed up the wholesale cost of electricity by about 20%.

‘Labor’s biggest failure on electricity bills in this period was rhetorical. It overstated its control over costs.’ Photograph: Lukas Coch/AAP

None of it was due to an influx of renewable energy, but it was felt by households because the wholesale price is about a third of their bill. There have also been increases in electricity distribution costs and network charges.

There is a case that Labor’s biggest failure on electricity bills in this period was rhetorical. It overstated its control over costs by claiming modelling by the consultants RepuTex showed the average annual household bill would fall $275 by 2025 as more renewable energy flooded into the grid. This was a mistake that continues to bite. Not politically – it didn’t stop a landslide ALP win in May – but in adding fuel to a misinformation campaign against a clean-energy revolution.

If you want to know the truth about electricity prices, it’s worth listening to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission. Its most recent report found the median quarterly bill increased 4% – a little more than inflation – over the last year of data if federal government rebates are not counted. Add the rebates in, and a median bill was 21% less than a year earlier.

Alternatively, you could listen to Dylan McConnell, a senior research associate at the University of New South Wales, who says: “Electricity prices are going up because we have an ageing system that needs replacing, and replacing it is expensive. Renewable energy and storage is the least-cost. But whatever it is will be more expensive than what we’ve had before, which was built by the states 30 or 40 years ago.”

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The spectacular nonsense in the claims about net zero emissions targets and electricity bills extends to the other major argument against cutting pollution sharply by mid-century: that the rest of the world is abandoning the goal.

It is true that there are headwinds. Donald Trump is a major culprit, and much rests on the 2028 US presidential election. There are divisions showing within the European Union. Canada’s Mark Carney is more focused on stopping US tariffs wrecking the economy than meeting climate targets. In the UK, the openly climate-denying Reform party is ahead in the polls.

But the scale of the pushback is regularly overstated. The EU still pledges a 90% emissions cut by 2040. The UK Labor government also promises deep cuts, and has nearly four years to try to recover before it next has to face voters. The Economist this week reported on the mind-boggling scale of renewable energy construction in China. A separate analysis found China’s emissions have been flat or falling over the past 18 months.

More than 140 countries have set or are considering net zero emissions targets, mostly for 2050. More than 100 countries have made new pledges including 2035 emissions targets before the Cop30 climate conference under way in Brazil.

Whether countries will meet and go beyond their targets, as scientists say they must if the world is to avoid increasingly catastrophic climate damage, is a valid question. But that’s not what the argument in Australia over net zero emissions is about. At its heart, it’s about a trajectory: whether to push on in cutting emissions, backing green industries and preparing for the future, or walking away from that effort with little acknowledgement of the consequences.

Delegates listen to Brazilian president Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva deliver the opening speech at Cop30. Photograph: Eraldo Peres/AP

None of this is to ignore the problems inherent in net zero targets. As the climate scientist Joëlle Gergis indicated last week, they won’t work if they are used as an excuse to continue burning fossil fuels and relying on tree planting and other nature projects that suck that new carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

A successful path to net zero, or something like it, will require deep direct emissions cuts. And the evidence suggests the Australian government’s net zero plan risks being too far too reliant on rubbery data about how much CO2 can be absorbed naturally.

This points to what may be the biggest short-term problem with the Coalition’s battle over a net zero targets. It lets Labor off the hook.

The government has taken strides on domestic policy. It is miles ahead of the Coalition in taking the issue seriously. But there are unanswered questions about what it will do outside the power sector.

Labor MPs support continuing a polluting fossil fuel export industry indefinitely. Its carbon offsets regime has been repeatedly challenged, including in the respected journal Nature. Its climate adaptation plan remains a sketch.

These issues deserve scrutiny in parliament and the news media, but that rarely happens while the Coalition and its backers are engaged in an apparently endless ideological climate war.

That they are waging it on themselves doesn’t make that any better.

Adam Morton is Guardian Australia’s climate and environment editor