umm.. so as a marketing person, I thought you would actually have something more robust than "let's not be nostalgic".

What's happened to aggressive and robust marketing of AGW .. not working anymore, people tired of it .. figures.

I do agree though, you need to change your tack as nothing to date is working.

So what now, the doom and gloom end of the world hysteria hasn't worked, folks just turn off anyone who runs that line, regardless of what it's about - you sound like a loony tunes type if you go there and you deserve all the ridicule you get.

Trying to pretend you can predict the future is always good for a laugh, but if you get the slightest doubt, you've lost it - and the whole IPCC glacier as well as other mistakes and CRU email debacle were enough to convince many people that there is doubt. Why fudge if you didn't have to, if the data really is robust, why copy out of articles instead of real science?

Name calling of people you disagree with instead of dealing with legitimate questioning, is not a good look either so the us and them thing doesn't work either .. mind you people still think it's worth a shot.

So you're left trying to find a new angle, good luck, but I suspect you'll just find yourselves back in the emotional hysteria and exaggeration zone.

The problem is how to convince people to join your cause and you are alienate them. As our dear leader finds, bagging out Australians as "deniers" and not caring "about the children" did him more damage than good, then the huge loss of face at Copenhagen. He has more than deferring the ETS to deal with, that's for sure.

BTW - I love that line "consults on framing and messaging", what's up, are marketeer and sales man titles not good enough?

Thank you for your lucid arguments. I use the same - but haven't got my act together to write the record as you have.

I believe that the Climate Change Groups were captured my middle-class scare tactics. I am ever the optimist longing for mass involvement. With regard to the poor communications of the climate change movement I use a fictional Joe Blow on his way to the pub with the form guide under his arm. Scare him to death with the sky's falling and blind him with 350 parts per million and his eyes glaze over and he decides to leave it to the govt and completely ignore the whole thing.

I would prefer to tell Joe Blow about the Theory of Anyway (http://www.energybulletin.net/node/25115) - the understandable concept of what we should be doing anyway i.e. grow your own; water and energy conservation etc. Chances are our fictional Joe Blow will comprehend this (after all if he's not doing it we know his parents and grandparents probably were). Hopefully, he can catch on to the extent that he will get his nose out of the form guide and start a bar room conversation about the whole thing!

I told an up-country failed Green candidate this one day. His disdainful reply was that he didn't care at all about Joe Blow. I was too polite to say that he fulfilled one part of my idea of The Greens - gumnut fairies or fascists and I thought him a fascist, a lurking totalitarian!

So keep up the good work Leigh. One thing I would add is that the CC groups seemed to have no political or international comprehension whatsoever. Did they never consider what the USA, China and India might be thinking? Did they never consider how international action would succeed without them?

"Direct action will continue to perform a cathartic function for climate change activists, but its ability to lead to transformative change like the civil rights movement in the US, or more modest victory for Australian workers against the Howard government, is limited".

I think the author is under-estimating the role of direct action. The failure of the Howard government to acknowlege the wishes of the huge number of Australians who demonstated against the Iraq war but then the Howard Government still winning subsequent elections, I think is more understandable in terms of timing. The decision to take Australia to an illegal war was done quickly, the protests had a short amount of time in which to be held, and the next election was two years away. Come that election, most likely people were still not happy about the Iraq invasion, but other factors were more to the fore. TBC

I think the campaign to have David Hicks returned from Guantanamo and the campaign to have the children freed from detention and camps like Baxter closed (sad about the back-sliding) and those successes are probably closer to what can be achieved by direct action on climate change. Those campaigns took years of niggling, protests, marches, stalls, petitions, but in the end I think it was the Government's realisation that here they had real vote losers generated by a growing feeling of unhappiness from the electorate that came from publicity about the issue from those actions that swung them into action. Continued action that makes the media keeps the issue in the spot-light while a polite letter to your member of Parliament just gets ignored.

I had to do a google on the word Catharis. The medical term gave me a giggle. But no, direct action on climate change has definately the potential to be a successful tool in achieving a overall success in the campaign rather than acting as a personal cleanser for activists. How many people would have heard that Victoria's brown coal industry was highly polluting for instance, or there was concern in the Hunter Valley about the profusion of mines and their damage without protests such as stopping coal trains.

You have to feel a bit sorry for the Leigh's of this world.

They pick a nice trendy area to studdy, one that should give them to access to the gravy train for life, only to find the wheels are falling off that particular train, just as they get on the thing. Oh, dear.

Well Leigh, I see you don't let facts get in the way of a good yarn, mate. You must have missed the 3 recently published papers, showing that the Maldives [& most coral atolls] are actually growing, not being overwhelmed, as the money hungry Nasheed claims.

The fact that sea level rise is almost non existent helps, but the fact that atolls only exist, because they grow, as their parent volcanic base sinks, just may be part of it.

Yes mate, it must be hard, but you are young. Go back to school, & studdy something real, & usefull. You may then find a train who's wheels are more firmly attached. Look for one that has some facts included in the course. It's the ones with all this airy fairy stuff trying to hold those wheels on, that tend to fail, sooner or later.

While I cannot comment on the issue of the effectivenes of past direct action campaigns, the climate change issue is one ideally suited to activists. They can start endless small initiatives such as Earth Hour that make no difference, individually or collectively, but make them feel good and make consumers feel better about the supposed problem. Not incidentally, the activists can attract funding for these initiatives.
There was never anything to be done about climate change, as such. Restricting emissions is simply too hard. Even holding the line at current emission levels is impossible. forget it people, and move on.