As the federal government's two-day tax forum wound to a close in Canberra, Malcolm Turnbull was setting his sights on bigger-picture issues, delivering an address in the UK overnight on the need for better thinking and leadership on issues such as climate change.

The Opposition spokesman for communications was in London to share his view that nations like China and India will become the global leaders in, among other things, action against global warming, with climate impacts on those nations ensuring that they act.

"China and India will take the global leadership on climate change: they are suffering for it," Turnbull told the Guardian, while also warning that an "extraordinary war against science" in the US and elsewhere would see nations trailing in China's wake.

"The paradox is that as the physical signs of climate change get stronger, the political will gets weaker in the US," he told the paper.

And he drove this point home in his speech, too: "While politicians in the West argue about whether or not climate change is real, in China, the world's largest emitter, billions are being invested in wind, solar and electric vehicles," Turnbull said.

"Just as Japan and then Korea targeted electronics as a national industrial priority, so now is China seeking to take the lead in green technology."

Turnbull said that on difficult political issues like climate change, "preparing for a more competitive world in which China and India are two of the three largest economies requires long term thinking and leadership – leadership to persuade voters that rather than spend today we should invest for a more prosperous tomorrow."

But Turnbull also stressed that the rise of China, India and other emerging economies should be seen as an opportunity and not a threat, telling the audience that the challenge for political leaders was ''to persuade voters that rather than spend today, we should invest for a more prosperous tomorrow''.

"Just as research, education and indeed infrastructure are long-term investments, so too is there a need in my country to recognise our terms-of-trade windfall will not last forever. There is a view that it will, especially in Canberra, and that is dangerous complacency," he said.

The Age reports that Turnbull told the London conference that he often listened to podcasts of university discussions on climate issues while riding his bike around Lake Burley Griffin in Canberra.

He said he found this exercise "stimulating" and "therapeutic" and that it provided "a calm and rational contrast to the furious discord of Australian politics in 2011."

And while he made no mention of either side of Australian politics in his London School of Economics address, the Guardian reports that Turnbull lambasted Prime Minister Julia Gillard for her failure to sell the idea of pricing carbon to the public successfully.

The paper also reports that Turnbull predicted the return of Kevin Rudd as Labor leader within four months.

"The advocacy is just woeful," Turnbull told the Guardian. "To get big reforms like carbon trading through, you have to understand it completely, be able to articulate it compellingly and the public have to believe you believe it."

"The carbon trading debate [in Australia] has become a cost of living debate," he said, adding that it would increase the cost of living by just 0.7 per cent.