"While discussions about the environment might address a vast array of topics and problems, climate change has recently become the primary focus of attention in nearly all venues of public discourse. This is perhaps because the stakes are extremely high, it is a politically and economically charged issue, and it intersects with myriad other environmental problems. In the various media there is vigorous debate about the “truth” of climate change, debate that is bound up with seemingly intractable ideological differences between those who affirm and those who deny that the climate is changing and that humans bear responsibility for it. It is thus often instructive to pay attention to the social, political, and economic dimensions of climate change discourse (including how issues of power tend to reside beneath the surface), and to discern how science and scientific data are used either to prop up or dismantle the conclusion that humans are causing egregious changes to global climate systems. Of course, there may also be genuine debate among scientists about how to interpret some of the relevant data. In this context it is a challenge to discuss the ethics of climate change when the terms of discussion are so volatile and the various dimensions so complexly interwoven." -- Sam Thomas, Climate Change