Three years ago,
Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison, then Treasurer, brandished a lump of coal in parliament as a totem of how the ruling conservative coalition planned to keep the lights on and power prices low.
![Australia softens climate change rhetoric as bushfires, and voters, rage](https://media.zenfs.com/en-US/reuters.com/63722054b7e683e342755ab18fd2ca9c)
Now, with the country experiencing one of its worst ever bushfire seasons and facing criticism for his pro-coal policies, Morrison is acknowledging climate change is real.
"I think we want to have a high level of confidence that as a nation we are improving our resilience and our adaptation to respond to the reality of the environment in which we live," Morrison told reporters in Canberra on Wednesday.