More importantly, the question I am always left with, is why don’t we spend some of this money adapting to the changes the world may bring? I think it would be more cost effective and cost efficient.

And so, today, those who wish to preserve their rich, polluting lifestyles willingly clutch at the fantasy being offered by the climate change deniers: they do not know that climate change is happening. And when a future generation asks them why they behaved as they did, they will say they were lied to by that same climate change denial lobby, ignoring the fact that those lies could only be effective if they themselves chose to ignore the people on the other side of the debate who spoke the truth.

Nobody was being ‘persuaded’, they were simply being given the excuse they were already looking for.

The studio audience of maybe 80 people was infiltrated by a right wing group that managed to ask maybe half of the questions raised. One made some point that was so obscure nobody on the panel could understand the question (something along the lines of “what about carbon 14″ as this apparently discredits all the GW theories) but several others made a more interesting claim. They suggested that the whole environmental movement was really started by a Nazi sympathiser, so all of us who believe this GW stuff are either deliberately or unwittingly promoting a eugenics / population control agenda that is designed to “wipe out Africa”. I looked up their web site and found a further theory, that Inconvenient Truth was really somehow connected to a plot to avoid having to “impeach” Vice President Cheyney.

I don’t think they won any popular support. Their presence was noted in the local media but not particularly sympathetically. Their web site claimed that they had “turned the debate around” and send shock waves through the Australian community but only one of their comments or questions was actually taken seriously by the moderator or the panel, and that one was a panel member who when asked if he supported world population control said “that’s your comment, not mine”.

It fits well with your assertion that the facts are almost irrelevant to what people choose to believe.

Swindle will be shown on the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s (ABC) channel on July 12. The only review I’ve seen so far is either supportive of its views or satire, but I fear the former. (The review was in The Age which today carried an article by you.)

I am not a climate scientist, but I am a social scientist, so I will try to keep my observations in the areas of subjects that I have a greater understanding.

Let me be clear here. I am a complete believer in climate change. There is no doubt in my mind that the vast majority of scientists on this subject are correct and that man’s activity on the planet is causing that change.

What I am interested in is the grey areas of behaviour change. I think that one of the problems with this great article is that it reduces the behaviour patterns into black and white. But it is not so clear as that, an example being my wife. Like me she is environmentally aware, happily is a member of an organic box scheme, wanted to have a house within walking /cycling distance of work, takes the train whenever she needs to go on business meetings, has installed better insulation, top of the range low energy central heating etc. etc.

But foreign holidays – she loves ‘em. And despite all the evidence to the contrary – and her general belief and agreement that we should be minimising our carbon footprint – she has a blindspot. She will happily quote denial figures on foreign flights. Because she doesn’t want to give it up. Travel is her passion and addiction. Deep down she knows that she is lying to herself about this aspect. It doesn’t fit in with her generally rational and well considered approach to minimising her impact on the planet. But like any addict (mine’s tobacco for instance – so I know the lies you can tell yourself) she will wriggle and squirm and indulge in all kinds of cognitive dissonance to keep this aspect out of changing the way she lives.

This is, in my mind the greatest issue. Denial is no longer the major battle. Offering solutions that are more appealing than the present is the problem. The problem is for many people, the green alternative is presented as such a joyless, hair-shirted world, where everything fun is presented as damaging and destructive.

My submission to the way forward is to say that, everytime that I have seen someone converted to organic food is not through guilt, or concern, or environmental awareness – but taste. When people smile and say ‘yum!’ is when they want to convert. The same goes for everything else. Of course we still need the push of global destruction behind people – but surely we also need some pull too – a vision of a world that is vibrant and exciting and thrilling – or behaviour will never change.