Climate change is more than an abstract idea

The issue attracts many idealists for whom it is the oppositional ideology du jour and is pursued with religious zeal. But that does not make global warming another arm of ideological debate, to be fought in the same realm as workplace relations or private health insurance.

Climate sceptics are often conservatives and fear the prospect of large-scale government intervention more than the destruction of the human species.

Climate change highlights the difficulties of science opposing established ideologies, not unlike the days of Galileo or Newton coming up against the Church. But science is played out with intense rigour over time in peer reviewed journals and academic meetings.

Its appearance in newspapers is filtered by journalists, few of whom have scientific training. Any climate sceptic with any sort of scientific training is shunned by colleagues but covered in compensatory glory by the far right.

Those who continue to doubt the need to attack climate change, and its inherent moral urgency, would do well to speak to those who will be affected first, the developing world's poor.

Although Australia's small population means our overall contribution to greenhouse emissions is small, we remain the highest per capita emitter in the world, 35 per cent greater than the US according to a recent UN report.

If ever there was an issue on which to take moral leadership, this is it.