How to fight the climate change backlash

The backlash is upon us.

In many ways it was to be expected. On their own, the failure of the Copenhagen Summit to deliver on expectations; the undoubtedly orchestrated campaign to discredit climate scientists working at the University of East Anglia and contributions to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) would have proved damaging. Taken together they are manna from heaven for the climate sceptics and those with vested interests who are attempting to block the transition to a low-carbon economy.

More generally, a backlash has been inevitable for some time. Any movement demanding great social and economic change faces periodic backlashes. Feminism has been locked in a two-steps-forward-one-step-back cycle of progress and backlash for decades, while the civil rights movement has sadly got well used to the periodic re-emergence of ugly and occasionally violent challenges to its demands for equality.

Environmentalism and the transition to a low-carbon and sustainable economy is no different. It will inevitably face occasional backlashes that will challenge both the conventional thinking on climate change science and the policy proposals for tackling global warming.

It is hard to appreciate it right now – when every story about the so-called "climategate emails" prompts screeds of irrational "told you so" taunting from people who still cannot tell the difference between neither one-off data points and underlying climatic trends, one flawed report and a canon of work, nor the essential difference between conspiracy and cock-up – but backlashes can bring numerous benefits. They make advocates of progressive change constantly test their arguments against the real world and the latest available evidence, while also helping to eradicate any flabby thinking and lax standards that may have crept in – something the IPCC evidently needs if its ludicrous claim that Himalayan glaciers could disappear by 2035 is anything to go by.

However, these benefits can only be realised if the backlash is resisted, and with many media outlets taking sceptics' warped interpretations of the climategate affair at face value and surveys consistently showing that climate change is slipping down the public and political agenda, that is not guaranteed. Which begs the question: how do business leaders who remain convinced that urgent action if needed to tackle climate change resist the backlash and keep their low-carbon strategies on track?

Again, there is much to be learned from previous social revolutions. The golden rule of challenging a backlash is to return to the fundamental issues that originally inspired action – to get back to brass tacks.

This tactic is deployed time and again by equality campaigners who respond to opposition from those seeking to perpetuate gender or race inequality by pointing out the continuing differentials in salary and other economic indicators that are imposed upon different groups. It is such a well-worn argument because it is unanswerable. Backlashes against efforts to tackle inequality tend to wear themselves out on the implacable crux of the problem: namely that entirely unjustified discrimination and inequality still exist.

The same tactic can and should be being deployed by an environmental and green business movement that to date has been thoroughly outmanoeuvred in the fight for public opinion. Not least because the fundamental issues that have driven the low-carbon economy thus far are uncontestable and far more compelling than any cooked-up scandal over a few misplaced weather stations.

This is what we know.

Global average temperatures vary from year to year and decade to decade, but they have been on an upwards trajectory for decades. This is an observable reality. You can see it in temperature records and if you don't trust them, you can see it with your own eyes in the forms of now and then photographs of retreating glaciers. We also know that if temperatures continue to rise unchecked, it will have a catastrophic effect on biodiversity, weather systems, sea levels and the global economy.

On top of this, we know that greenhouse gases trap heat. Again, this is an observable reality – if you have some baking soda, a couple of plastic bottles and a thermometer, you can do the experiment yourself. There has not been a single peer-reviewed scientific paper in recent history that challenges the underlying hypothesis that the increase in greenhouse gas emissions resulting from man's activity is far and away the most likely cause of rising global temperatures.

The contrived scandal over the climategate emails and the IPCC's inclusion of a number of exaggerated predictions in its last report does absolutely nothing to challenge these realities. The area where there is genuine debate among climate scientists is at the fringes of our understanding. It deals with questions involving how fast temperatures will rise; what effect they will have; how natural cycles in warming and cooling, such as the one we have experienced over the past decade, will accelerate or slow the underlying increases in temperature; and how carbon sinks will be affected. That scientists admit they do not know the answers to these questions should make us more concerned about pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, not less.

None of this will convince your average climate sceptic, who can come up with a cavalcade of nonsense to try to undermine each of the points above, while singularly ignoring the inconvenient reality that the simple balance of risk makes urgent action to curb carbon emissions highly desirable.

However, the backlash against the low-carbon economy has been far quieter in challenging the numerous other benefits it will bring. The fundamental point that a low-carbon economy will bolster energy security, reduce air pollution and associated health costs, insulate countries against the rising price of oil and natural resources, and create jobs, goes largely unchallenged by those opposing the low-carbon economy on the simple grounds that the case is unanswerable.

As president Obama observed in his State of the Union address: "I know that there are those who disagree with the overwhelming scientific evidence on climate change. But here's the thing: even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy."

It is far easier for opponents of sustainable developments to fixate on leaked emails taken out of context or rare errors from climate scientists working to try to better understand the world in which we live, than it is to address the fundamental realities of risk and reward that are driving the emergence of the low-carbon economy. And it is these underlying facts that will eventually defeat the current backlash.