It’s all gone a bit Pete Tong hasn’t it? Aggressive Climate Change Deniers hacked into the Climate Research Unit’s E:Mails and downloaded thousands of inter-personal notes covering millions of words. What did they find? Well, just about nothing. Just like the Bible – if you look hard enough you can find something that backs whatever distorted belief system you wish to reinforce. They found no evidence of conspiracy and no lack of evidence for man-made climate change. But what little they did find they milked for all it is worth. Meanwhile the American Petroleum Institute quietly pumped $52million dollars into the American Political system to ensure that Obama does precisely NOTHING at Copenhagen – let alone go to it.

No wonder the public are confused. Last month, the Pew Research Center released its latest poll on the American public’s attitude to Climate Change. Belief that Climate Change is occurring had declined from 71% in April 2008 to 56% in October and the belief that Climate Change is human-caused declined from 47% to 36%. This gets more bizarre by the second. At precisely the same time 100 scientists who worked on the IPCC 2007 report released a 2009 update in time for Copenhagen. Their conclusions? Ice at both poles is melting faster than predicted, the claims of recent global cooling are wrong, and world leaders must act fast if steep temperature rises are to be avoided.

We have not had a greater divergence between what the public believe and what science knows. The internet is abuzz with the furious blogging and comments of what seems like a thousand amateur Climate change Deniers. Amazon’s best selling science books are all on Climate Change Denial. It seems that collective madness has crept upon us. Pretty soon we’ll be condemning midwives to drowning for being Witches. It is all very depressing. Maybe it is the darkest just before dawn? Maybe we are on the verge of a breakthrough? The coincidence between public doubt, scientific certainty and Government action is NOT coincidental. It was all very well blaming each other when we thought nothing would actually get done. But as soon as something IS about to get done we chickened out of the deal. Good Lord! The Government may actually enforce a Carbon Budget! Outrageous Orwellian nightmare! It seems people would support action on climate change as long as no action was actually taken.

Only a few years ago it looked like Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” has smashed its way into the public consciousness. The debate was over. Although the debate was over and the science settled it seemed that the public attitude is fickle and easily swayed into disinterest as soon as economic recession headed their way. Afterall – who cares when Governmental Leadership clearly felt it necessary to pump trillions into a banking sector (that wasn’t allowed to fail) whilst barely passing a few pennies towards greening the economy?

So we are clutched grimly in the jaws of history with neither victory nor defeat quite at hand. The inconvenient truth is that the public just wish the problem to go away so they can get on with their lives. They will vote for whoever makes it go away. There are enough politicians out there who will do just that – not by agreeing to strict emissions caps at Copenhagen but by doing the far easier thing – simply saying the problem does not exist. Problem solved. Case closed. We’ll just find a million pounds here or there to bail out the flood victims in north-England villages. We’ll adapt. Well, for a hundred years maybe. But then....

So here we are in the midst of an inter-generational civil war. If we choose now to do nothing then we have declared this war upon generations yet unborn. Cos I'm alright jack. Until now it was nothing more than a few skirmishes but how long until the war catches up with THIS generation? How long until the computer hackers turn into assassins? Of course it is the wrong war. Since we have, at best, 20 years in which to enjoy fossil fuels (at current levels of consumption and cheapness) then we will have to transition to the post-carbon world anyway. And that will take 20 to 40 years at best. So we may as well roll up our sleeves and get on with it. Mitigating the risk of climate change comes free with the package.

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