When the good guys get vindictive it’s a sign we’re in serious trouble, says Mallen Baker

I will admit to having been mildly amused when the Heartland Institute – a climate denial campaign group – found that some of its confidential documents had appeared on a website.

The organisation, which had revelled in the hacking of emails of the University of East Anglia’s climate scientists, was suddenly foaming at the mouth and promising legal reprisals.

But, in truth, the release contained no smoking gun. The organisation did not get large slabs of cash from some oil company. It was promoting its views into schools, but we already knew that. All in all it was a bit of a distraction from the seriousness of the real issues.

Then it took a turn for the worse. Dr Peter Gleick, president of the Pacific Institute, water scientist and high profile proponent of urgent action on climate change, stepped into the light to confess to being the guilty party.

I realised with a bit of a start that now I had ambiguous feelings about what had been done.

If Gleick had been a full-time journalist, and the documents had revealed something demonstrably in the public interest, it would certainly have been a lot less controversial.

But Gleick is not a journalist. He is a scientist. And he has been in the public domain urging that public policy should follow the implications of climate science.

For him to undertake this action is pretty disastrous. It undermines the integrity of those arguing the case. When scientists allow themselves to be goaded by the anti-science political groups into behaving in a tribal, partisan way – tempting though it is – they lose the very thing that gives them credibility.

People will no longer believe that scientists’ word can be trusted.

What was revealed was embarrassing to the institute. Its list of donors was made public, and it had to apologise to them as journalists were approaching them all for comment. But that is not the same as the public interest.

Everyone’s doing it

Does it matter? After all, fighting just as dirty as the bad guys is pretty much standard these days. Gandhi might have gone on hunger strike to persuade his followers to stick to the path of virtuous non-violence, but isn’t that a historical anomaly? After all, it was the “good guys” that dropped the atom bomb in the second world war, and the use of torture by the defenders of freedom has been established as a common occurrence.

Well, yes, it does matter. The fact remains that actions like this sink us further into the mire.

How will the challenge of climate change be met? In most parts of the world, the answer to that question is that we have to build cross-party consensus, to gain acceptance from all sections of society that change needs to take place, and then to build something enduring.

Getting one party that is committed to sustainability elected, only for the other lot to boot the ideas out in four years’ time, is not going to do the job.

In the US, climate change has been allowed to become a partisan issue. So-called scientists taking pleasure in landing blows on the opposition only further entrenches that situation.

There are signs, though, that the UN is starting to see that businesses may provide the way out. After all, even while US politicians argue about whether climate change exists, many of the top US-based companies are taking action already.

Businesses are pragmatic and used to driving change internally to adapt in the face of external realities. And, of course, businesses are powerful constituencies for politicians and their voices can be influential. Ironically, campaigners most often fear this influence and expect it to be used against the public good. But it might be just the thing that ultimately saves us.

The UN climate chief, Christiana Figueres, is starting to consider this. She has been reaching out to chief executives of some of the top companies such as Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Unilever. She wants companies that “have the ear of many of the decision-makers and the opinion leaders of different countries” to act as “a push factor”.

Maybe Gandhi had it right after all. He said there are common problems. There will either be common solutions or there will not be solutions. It is perfectly possible for the human race to sail over the threshold of extinction, pointing fingers at each other and casting blame till the last dying breath.

The challenge is to build consensus. Business is very much needed as part of that solution.

Mallen Baker is founder of Business Respect and a contributing editor to Ethical Corporation.