I agree - we certainly shouldn't ignore the money people have spent to muddy the debate.

But we shouldn't delude ourselves as to why people would spend that money. They're spending it to protect their money, pure and simple. And they'll keep doing that for ever.

Does it make more political sense to punish them for that, to try and get them to stop protecting their money? Or does it make more sense to work with that instinct, and make protecting that money environmentally responsible?

I'd say our suggestion is the far more realistic one.

I agree that pointlessly provoking an opponent reduces the likelihood of a good outcome to the discussion (though it can feel good for a little while to have had a rant).

However, is there is discrepancy between the claim in the article that major oil companies "acted in good faith" and not in order "to be evil" and the admission in the comments that "They're spending [money on misinformation campaigns] to protect their money, pure and simple."?

Why is it not evil to try to protect one's money through lies and obfuscation? Isn't that what the current Murdoch crisis is all about - the pursuit of profit leading to unethical and illegal behaviour? Good motives don't justify lies or the destruction of scientific trust, nor do they justify the pursuit of a course of action that will have serious negative consequences for millions or even billions of people. The profit motive is not morally neutral, especially when it is presented in such "pure" form.

I truly don't disagree with your argument Byron. I think that protecting one's money through lies and obfuscation is reprehensible behaviour, even more so when the future of the planet is at stake.

What I would say though is that we need to end our myopic focus on the crime alone, and start paying attention to the causes of that crime.

Thank you for indicating your agreement. I agree that changing the economic incentives needs to be part of the picture (and the focus on pricing carbon indicates that this is already a significant part of most activists' agenda - including Mr Gore).

Do you agree with my final sentence? If so, then there will be more to shifting behaviour than shifting the bottom line.

Although it is still too early to judge the ultimate effects, do you think that the current scandals involving News Corp might indicate that calling people out for their lies might have some place in creating a more accountable fossil fuel industry?

Overall, I agree that positive incentives are very important, however, I would also argue that these need not be (and ought not be) exclusively financial. We can praise those captains of industry who make decisions for the long term, and can lay out an attractive vision of a world where less (in certain respects) can mean more (in other, more important, respects). We can find areas of shared concern and build on common ground, appealing to moral judgements as well as the hip pocket.

But I still think that calling out the lies and dark arts of the major polluters is an important part of the process. Until the public have a much lower tolerance level for industry-sponsored misinformation, the political will to create economic incentives for decarbonisation will be lacking or weak.

Absolutely, I agree that calling out lies is a critical part of the overall campaign. Not only does it make such industries more accountable, it also rewards the good (ie, more ethical, more environmentally and socially responsible) ends of the industry.

On your final sentence - whether the profit motive is morally neutral or not - I'm not certain I can easily comment without much more thought.

Is it wrong for a self-employed craftsperson to try to get the most from the sale of the table they've made? They certainly aren't paid wages, so 'profit' would be just the difference between the costs they outlayed in making the table (materials, tools etc) and what they're able to sell it for. Selling at cost would mean that their time isn't accounted for, and they won't be able to eat. I don't think that sense of profit is wrong.

Is it wrong for a monopolistic company to exploit their position to gouge as much profit as they can from their customers? Yes, I think that is wrong.

But aside from these two extremes, I don't think it is easy to say whether or not profit is ethically neutral (I'm shying away from morals, as I'm less able to speak there).

Again, I agree that many are involved in reprehensible behaviour, spreading lies and FUD. But again, the best way to stop this is to understand why they're doing it and to change the incentives.

What is more likely to stop this behaviour? Calling it out, time and again, and punishing with social stigma? Or being grownups, and shifting the incentives?

Will,

I can see what you are getting at, and agree that influencing fossil fuel companies through their profit motive may be the most pragmatic approach. However, your essay goes further than that and asks us to believe that the fossil fuel companies are acting in good faith. They aren't. The way they are funding lies about the science is evil, and I think they need to be called out on this "time and again". If they don't like the social stigma attached with funding lies, then they shouldn't do it.

Another point: while financial incentives will certainly lead to changing the behaviour of the fossil fuel companies, we will never be able to implement such incentives without the political will to do so.

And this requires pressure from the voters. Which is precisely what Al Gore's new initiative may achieve.

So I don't think you should write off Al Gore's contribution to the debate. Without his "An Inconvenient Truth" there would be much less public understanding of the issues.

On another point, you are setting up a strawman when you say that people believe that "Big Coal" and "Big Oil" are motivated by a desire to destroy the world. Surely no one actually believes that?

However, I think a lot of people would agree that "Big Coal" and "Big Oil" are so focused on short term profits that they don't care about or don't understand the enormous long-term damage they are doing to the environment. I regard that behaviour as evil and morally repugnant.

First, an admission: our use of the word 'hippies' was churlish and juvenile.

But please - as we argued - assume good faith on the behalf of your opponent, including me in this case. My comment in response to Byron was far from disingenuous. I meant what I said.

Again, we're not ignoring disinformation and lies - our argument is that the best way to solve the real problem - climate change - is to go to the cause of the lying rather than the lying itself.

As I said above, I would simply amend your final line to read "go to the cause of the lying as well as the lying itself."

Ok, imagine the word 'hippies' isn't there.

Do you dismiss the entire argument on the basis of one word? Do you dismiss my rejoinder to your points above?

We don't want to miss out on a solution to climate change because of a myopic focus on the wrong targets. And that, I believe, is a substantive critique of many in the climate action movement.

I think your points are relevant Felix, and truly (as I've said in many other responses to comments here), I don't believe bad faith behaviour should be rewarded or ignored.

But rather than restate my position yet again (see my other responses), I'd like to try and reframe your thinking on denial and denialism.

Firstly, denialism exists, and is a significant problem for solving climate change.

Secondly, denialism is clearly funded by vested fossil fuel industries.

I'm sure you agree up to here.

Yet here's the thing. The conversations I've had with climate science skeptics (their term for themselves*) very often reveal such skeptics to be very much engaged with the future of their society. These people care a lot. (I don't know their financial details; some may be financially invested, others may not. None were clearly fossil fuel industry employees).

Yes, they are misguided. But if we want to reach them, to change their thinking on climate change, then we need to think strategically, and hopefully along the lines of what I've argued above. Telling people where they are wrong, or that their thinking is likely to destroy civilisation is very unlikely to make an impression.

If, however, we find common ground, if we recognise that many are not lying, but sincerely believe what they believe - are acting in good faith - then we might find a place to talk. If we want them on our side (I believe we do), then we need to seduce, not harangue.

*Though it may rankle, I believe that we should use people's own labels, not pejorative terms others craft for them. Denialism is a thing, but 'denier' is a hostile label.

Thanks Tim - that was a really insightful reading.

I believe the core of the issue here lies in the interpretation of the critical sentence "We’re not going to do it by punishing people who acted in good faith."

For many who have commented I think this has been somewhat of a red rag, as if we are naive to - or excusing of - the bad faith manner in which many coal / oil companies have acted in spreading lies and FUD about climate change. We're not. Coal / oil companies have clearly acted in reprehensible, bad faith ways.

Yet the two paragraphs before were about the reason we have coal and oil industries in the first place - as part of a contract they have negotiated with society to provide us with the power we need. It is their original entering into this contract, prior to (substantive) knowledge of climate change, that we argue should be treated in good faith.

Certainly, we could have added "who acted in good faith in this original contract with society", or "who acted in good faith in some areas but acted reprehensibly elsewhere", yet this detracts from our point that we need to move away from a myopic focus on the 'evils' of 'Big Coal', and recognise that they have been crucial and positive actors in society.

I'm happy to accept that that sentence can be interpreted differently from our intent.

Yet this is my problem with some of the criticism we've received here: the two paragraphs before clearly flagged our intent, yet so many have seen this sentence as impossible; that it is simply not possible for coal or oil companies to have acted in good faith.

To get rid of carbon intensive energy, we need to be able to interpret that sentence as in some ways true.

It is this thinking that puts *people* in teams of 'good' or 'bad', 'for us' or 'against us' - and this thinking solves few problems. I'd rather we thought of *behaviours* as good or bad for society or the environment, and acted on the basis of that.

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Also, just for clarification, could you say what you mean by 'your political observations are not particularly astute'? Which political observations? I'm really not sure what you mean.

Hi everyone,

I've been impressed at the interesting comments (and responses from Will) to this article. If only all climate discussions were this civil. It is particularly impressive that Will has been willing to concede (I hope that he agrees) that his original article did make the case rather too strongly.

One point: Nature doesn't care what is politically possible. Politicians (and others) are fond of saying "we can't possibly do X, it is never going to happen".

Nature isn't going to respond to this by saying "OK, you drive a hard bargain, I'll give in and reduce the warming by 50%".

Nature is entirely impervious to politics.

Thanks Michael ;)

That's certainly true, nature doesn't care one jot. I think we're all on the same page here on that. It's probably why we're all so passionate about finding a solution.

Did we make the original argument too strongly? Possibly. It's clear our rhetoric has inflamed passions; we could probably have written it in a more gentle way. ;)

Yes, if we were to write it again tomorrow we'd probably write the article in a different tone. But we'd put forward the same central argument. We do ourselves - and our task - a great disservice if we spend more time demonising than building bridges.

(I recognise that a number of commentators have said that 'building bridges' is the opposite of what we've done in the article or I've done in the comments... But I am trying, I promise!)

(Also... sorry for writing such a long response to your comment - your invitation to consider how I'd do it differently got me to writing. This is as much an exercise for me ;)

Is ours a strawman argument? Do many in the climate action movement actually believe the things we suggested? Probably not many, probably even fewer if they're given a chance to think seriously. Yet the chance to think seriously about an issue doesn't reflect how cultural tropes emerge. Where Al Gore talked of Big Coal and Big Oil, Bob Brown has regularly asserted that we must "make the polluters pay". At one level, these are reasonable arguments. Who should pay but those who emit the greenhouse gases?

Yet though many in the fossil fuel industry have acted reprehensibly (I wish I could find a different word, but I can't bring myself to use 'evilly') in spreading doubt and lies, what got them into this situation in the first place?

Should we punish these companies for lying, spreading doubt? Yes, of course. But *punishment* in this area is irrelevant to solving climate change.

Should we punish these companies for emitting significant amounts of CO2 long after we became aware that this was causing significant damage to the climate? Possibly, though I'd argue that we are all complicit in this. And again, I'm not certain that punishment in this area is conducive to solutions.

Should we punish these companies for getting into the business of providing us with energy in carbon intensive ways? No.

Yet in the language of 'make the polluters pay' and 'Big oil' and 'Big coal' one can hear demands for punishment that take few of these nuances into account. Sure, it has to be a certain frame of mind that would want to interpret these statements in this way. Yet it is this frame of mind that exists on 'the other side'. On that 'side', such language reads as unfair demonisation. Crucially, this gets in the way of finding common ground to solve this problem.

Finally, as I believe this argument is still important, are we as a community able to receive critique? Are we able to recognise suggestions to improve our tactics? Because, as you note, nature doesn't care about politics, I'm going to keep advocating what I believe is the right path, and I hope that I can convince a few other people.